The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking) by Patrick Ness.I have been putting this whole series off for ages. Whenever a book becomes highly rated either on Goodreads or just in personal recommendations I immediately have no desire to read it anymore. It's a vicious cycle and it goes a little something like this: A book starts off (like almost every book) completely unknown. When someone begins reading it they have little to no expectations except maybe to escape reality for a few hours. Since they have low expectations the book will really impress them. They'll recommend it highly to their friends and the good people of Goodreads. And then what do you know, an average rating of 4.0 +. When other people see this amazing rating they'll get the book and start reading it with really high expectations and sometimes (I'll admit) the book really does live up to those expectations, but other times the reader will become disappointed in what they read. Then they'll swear off all popular high rated books until they're bored of the underdogs. When they do decide to read a popular book again (because let's face it, they will) they'll go in with lower expectations and then whaddya know, they're pleasantly surprised by the book and the cycle starts all over again. This is exactly what happened with me. And yes, I was more than pleasantly surprised.
I'm sure if I read this book with higher expectations that I'd still really enjoy it, but since I didn't it, I absolutely loved it. When I first started this book I thought, "oh hey, this is a lot like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer!" and as I continued reading I realized I was only partially right; it's written with the same speech style and a little of the same tone but the underlying themes are much more complex. Normally, the phonetically written words would have bugged me (informayshun, direkshun), I would have been pulling out my hair out and eventually thrown my kindle across the room, but in this book I actually enjoyed reading it. I even found myself a few times reading out loud with southern drawl.
Todd Hewitt lives in Prentisstown which is unlike any other town; everyone can hear each-other's thoughts, including animals. This is the never-ending stream of Noise that makes each and every person livingjust CHAOS WALKING. This Noise has caused many troubles in the past and Todd doesn't discover this until he's running for his life with nothing but his dog, Manchee, by his side.
"The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking."
Manchee ... Manchee, MANCHEE, MANCHEE. The best dog in the entire world. He's loyal, funny, and just too cute for his own good. Manchee in himself made this book 10 times better. Even after everything he's endured with Todd, he's still is able to push on through and help Todd wherever he is.
~MINOR SPOILERS BELOOOOWWWW~
Okay, my little theme connections to make me feel smarter and then I'll call it a night.
The title in itself sets a theme throughout this novel. Todd carries a knife everywhere he goes and even though he's given several opportunities to use it, he never does. He just injures, never letting go of his innocence. Never becoming a "man" according to Prentisstown guidelines but becoming a man in every aspect that matters. It was quite an amazing journey to watch Todd grow up. The amount of love I felt for the people he loved was incredible and he didn't even realize he felt so strongly towards those people until they were torn from him.
Anyway, I enjoyed this book. I did. I'm trying not to build it up too much so uhm yeah.. I mean it was alright you might like it yeah you'll probably like it you should look into reading it in the near-ish future.
See what I did there? That's some reverse psychology shit right there. Oh wait, I probably shouldn't tell you that. Oh well. This book was fantastic. It kept me on the edge of my seat and it definitely fits in the category of, "Popular, high-rated book on Goodreads that seems like it would be a let-down but is actually not and is actually really good and entertaining and totally didn't disappoint and this is probably a really long run on sentence but that doesn't matter because The Knife of Never Letting Go was pretty dangnabbing good yeah." Phew! Quite a mouth-full!"
He.he.he I get carried away sometimes..just like Passion Pit. he.he. Annyyywwaaayy
Keep calm and,
READ ON!
-Sheradyn
P.S.
I just remembered that I read another book by Patrick Ness that was an emotional roller-coaster: A Monster Calls. It was an amazingly unique story and I totes suggest reading it!
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