The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness

This review first appeared on Vulpes Libris where I write a guest review on the first wednesday of every month.

Read: July 2009

The Knife of Never Letting Go in one Tweet-sized chunk:
The Knife of Never Letting Go is a frantic, hair-raising, terrifying, complex, heartbreaking, exhilarating, novel.

“But a knife ain’t just a thing, is it? It’s a choice, it’s something you do. A knife says yes or no, cut or not, die or don’t. A knife takes a decision out of your hand and puts it in the world and it never goes back again.”

Public Health Warning:
This book contains probably the most horrific event I have ever read. Having swept through the first two thirds in a frenzy of enjoyment I was so traumatised that I threw the book across the room and had to be persuaded like a petulant toddler to pick it back up and finish.

Additional Public Health Warning:
Read this book. Health is about so much more than simply avoiding trauma and ill health. It is about promoting good health and that comes in many forms. The Knife of Never Letting Go may have cut me to the quick at times, but I still came away from it hungry for more. Everything about it, even those parts I really wished weren’t there, contributed to one of the most rewarding and exciting reads I have had in months.

But on to the book itself.

Todd Hewitt is the last boy in Prentisstown. But Prentisstown is a town like no other. There are no women, only men. And everyone can hear everything that everyone else is thinking in a constant and never-ending stream of Noise. There is no such thing as silence. No such thing as privacy. And until he becomes a man there are secrets which the rest of the town is keeping from him.

It is no wonder he is a so pissed off.

Then one day Todd and his dog Manchee stumble upon a hole in the Noise, a spot of absolute silence. The silence of a girl.

But that is impossible. There are no women left on New World. Unless everyone has been lying to him. And if that is the case, he is in danger. While Todd, Manchee, and the girl flee across New World in search of safety and answers, the men of Prentisstown are preparing for war...

 

The Knife of Never Letting Go is a frantic, hair-raising, terrifying, complex, heartbreaking, exhilarating, novel. It combines the pace and excitement of Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games, the invention, intelligence of quality of writing of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, and the moral ambiguity of Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines. It is a great book.

It is always difficult to write a good review of a book you love – the tendency to overuse hyperbole, bore the reader with irrelevance, or fail to view it all with a critical eye – but when that book is as multi faceted as The Knife of Never Letting Go it becomes doubly so. It would be so easy to compile a long bullet point list of all the diverse things I love about it, yet drawing them together as Patrick Ness does is far harder. His skill is in telling a poignant and intellectually rewarding tale which remains utterly unputdownable. The Chaos Walking trilogy, of which this is the first book, is packed with political intrigue, social commentary and thoughtful set pieces. Above all, it is about growing up and finding your place in a world which is nothing like you have been told it was. Gender relations are a good example of this. Because only men's thoughts are audible in Noise, New World is racked by pretty horrendous inter gender tensions. But instead of the usual sloppy journalistic stereotyping of the 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus' brigade, Patrick Ness actually explores what it is like to try and get to know someone whose background and communication style is different to your own. It takes time, and is a far cry from the fantasies he has grown up with, but as Todd gets to gets to know Viola, he comes to understand that despite the apparent differences, men and women are really not much different. There is a profound moment towards the end when this realisation hits him.

“And there, in that morning, in that new sunrise, I realize something.
I realize something important...
I know what she’s thinking...
I can read her Noise even tho she ain’t got none.
I know who she is.
I know Viola Eade.”

The Knife of Never Letting Go is crammed with similar Eureka passages where frenetic reading grinds to a halt as you stop and consider just how special it is to capture something so simply and with such little pretence. There is a whole secondary subtext to the plot itself which adds great depth to what is already a powerful work of imaginative fiction. Another glorious moment comes right at the heart of the novel, when they stumble into a sea of giant cows all thinking the same single word of Noise together, singing it to each other at different pitches so that it becomes a melody.

“They're singing Here. Calling it from one to another in their Noise.
Here I am.
Here we are.
Here we go.
Here is all that matters.
Here.
“It's-
Can I say?
It's like the song of a family where everything's always all right, it's a song of belonging that makes you belong just by hearing it, it's a song that'll always take care of you and never leave you. If you have a heart, it breaks, if you have a heart that’s broken, it fixes.”

That is what this book is all about: multiplicity, uncertainty, the absence of a simple truth. The struggles always just around the corner, and the beauty which can be found in the simplest of moments. If you are looking for a book to get a teenage boy reading this might be it. Todd is a very strong and engaging male lead. His mindset is that of many teenagers, his reactions to his world familiar. In the course of the journey he is forced to think long and hard about such things as the dangers of carrying a knife, how to interact with women, how to control his emotions. The narrative is written from his point of view, in his own vernacular style which is easy to get into and fits his caustic yet kind persona perfectly. This is not a 'boy's book' though, any more than it is a book solely for teenagers. It is another great example of the crossover literature which is in such a healthy state at the moment. The Knife of Never Letting Go is a book which I struggle to imagine anyone not liking.

And the tragic event which gave rise to my Public Health Warning at the outset of this review is the moment that really makes it. It may be painful, almost unbearably so, but at that moment you know that this is no light fairy tale in which everything will turn out okay. Here is a novelist who has no qualms about testing his readers. At any moment he may kill off your favourite character, or make them do something thoroughly horrible. There is no good and evil, no black and white, just a whole lot of moral ambiguity and painful mistakes. That uncertainty makes for an unpredictable read in which nothing ever turns out quite as you expect it to.

And just when you think safety and comfort are within Todd's grasp they are snatched away and the book ends on a precipice. Chaos Walking is a trilogy to really get your teeth into. The Ask and the Answer is a fitting and even more ambiguous sequel and I can't wait until Monsters of Men, the final part in the Chaos Walking trilogy, is published in May 2010. 240 days and counting...

9.5 out of 10

Mortal Engines - Philip Reeve

Read: October 2007

Thousands of years in the future, London has become a Traction City, an anthropomorphised metropolis on wheels which stalks the plains of the hunting ground (formerly Europe) in search of smaller cities to eat. For years it has been hiding in what was once the British Isles, building its defences and avoiding bigger prey, but now it has crossed the land bridge and is in search of food.

Within the city lives Tom, a young apprentice historian with an obsession for adventure. Then there is Katherine, the daughter of one of London’s most celebrated citizens and Tom’s hero, the explorer, archaeologist and adventurer Valentine. But soon Hester Shaw appears, appallingly scarred and with murderous revenge blazing in her eyes - and her target is Valentine himself.

As London scampers across the hunting ground and prepares to launch a fantastic new weapon known only as MEDUSA, events within its walls take disturbing twists which will soon propel Tom, Hester and Katherine into adventurers they never saw coming, but which may determine the future of the entire world. And Valentine has been sent on a secret mission, from which nobody can contact him.

What a great imagination Philip Reeve has. Where many authors would have satisfied themselves with the brilliant idea of Traction Cities, he goes the extra mile, developing an entire historico-philosophical justification for their existence. Municipal Darwinism it is called and is that extra touch of depth which turns a brilliantly exciting adventure into a really believable world in which you feel like you can almost touch the characters. It is a concept at once both exhilarating and terrifying; seen first through the eyes of Tom it is the ultimate adventure; the excitement of the chase, the celebration of the kill. But like Darwinism, it is also thoroughly cutthroat and merciless. It is both post apocalyptically barbarian, and technologically advanced. In a barren world where land animals seem extinct the Traction Cities roam the plains in search of a kill.

Mortal Engines is everything you could want in a teenage fantasy/adventure. It is well written, exciting, jammed full of intriguing ideas, and each of the characters is strong and individual and likeable. Even the truly horrible ones. As the first in a quartet of novels spanning the entire world and twenty years Mortal Engines is a series to really get your teeth into. Like all the best children’s fiction it is dark and at times quite remorseless: characters are alive one minute and dead the next, tragedies strike out of nowhere and endings are always tinged with remourse.

If you buy this book today, I am certain you will soon be buying Predator’s Gold, Infernal Devices and A Darkling Plain. This is a series to enjoy for weeks to come.


8 out of 10

Fever Crumb - Philip Reeve

Read: March 2009

Fever Crumb in one tweet sized chunk:

An exciting addition to the Mortal Engines canon, with an unexpected and fabulous treat for anyone who loved the Stalker Shrike.

Named after the condition her mother suffered when she was pregnant, Fever is the only girl ever to be admitted to the Guild of Engineers, having been found and adopted by Dr. Crumb when she was just a little baby. Now fourteen, she shaves her head daily, values reason above all else, and has never ventured further than the streets around the Enginerium. But when a former Engineer named Kit Solent asks her to assist him in excavating a new site on the outskirts of London, Fever moves out of the safety of her home and finds that everything she has believed about her life is built on fabrication. And so, whilst fleeing from the clutches of Skinners who wish to kill her and dealing with the strange memories taking over her brain, she must uncover the truth about her past before it is too late.

Set many generations before Mortal Engines, Fever Crumb provides an enticing pre-history to the adventures of Hester and Tom. London is a normal stationary city, wracked with internal division and only days away from war. An armoured fortresses advances from the North, bringing hysteria to the streets of London and reviving old hatreds thought long resolved. But unbeknownst to everyone, hidden in a tunnel deep underground is a machine which will transform the world forever. If only someone can work out how to unlock it.

Fever Crumb is a welcome addition to the Mortal Engines canon. It is filled with many of the same qualities which made the other books such a joy. There is the playful mythologizing of our everyday life which sees ‘Cheesers Crice’ become an old Cockney God, St. Kylie now an area of London, and an old vacuum cleaner mistaken for a dangerous weapon. Philip Reeve has a wicked sense of humour; his books are some of the funniest I have ever read. And they are complex too. Once more he is able to create delightfully morally ambiguous characters you like and dislike all in the same breath. There are ‘baddies’ who are almost likeable, ‘goodies’ you can’t help but revile, and most of the others lie somewhere in between. London is populated with these rogues, Dickensian in feel, surrounding by steampunk technology and crumbling, damp streets. It is familiar, and yet generations away from the sky travelling, city hunting world of Mortal Engines.

Well aware of its Mortal Engines legacy, Fever Crumb plays games with what its readers know is going to happen later on. There is one point where Dr. Crumb sneers at the idea of ‘municipal Darwinism,’ completely disregarding the idea of an entire city being put on wheels. It is a glorious destruction of the basis of the later books. At other times these links are made just a touch too obvious, but that is probably a result of the fact that Fever Crumb is aimed at a slightly younger audience than the rest of the series. The print is bigger, the plot slightly quicker. It is a nice easy read, and just what I needed.

With a surprise treat in store for all fans of the series, Fever Crumb is an enjoyable read, sure to be well received when it by fans and critics when it is published in May.

7 out of 10