The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

Title: The Knife of Never Letting Go

Author: Patrick Ness

Genre: Dystopia

Pages: 479

Summary from the Back of the Book:
"Prentisstown isn't like other towns. Everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts in an overwhelming, never-ending stream of Noise. Just a month away from the birthday that will make him a man, Todd and his dog, Manchee- whose thoughts Todd can hear, too, whether he wants to or not- stumble upon an area of complete silence. They find that in a town where privacy is impossible, something terrible has been hidden- a secret so awful that Todd and Manchee must run for their lives. But how do you escape when your pursuers can hear your every thought?"

Review:

I've heard a lot of praise about this book so I decided to give this thick monster of a book a shot. And let me tell you I was definitely not disappointed. I loved how the book was written phonetonically so the run-on sentences and fragments really helped the book stay really fast-paced. I love fast-paced.

I liked how even though it was written in phonetics (yer instead of your, direkshun instead of direction) but it was still easy to read. The only thing that I wonder about was why Todd never called the knife a "nife" that seems like he would have said that rather than include the silent "k". All well.

Todd, Manchee and Viola were wonderful characters. There were times when I wanted to flat out cry at their situation or an event that happened. Especially Manchee. He was definitely my favorite.

I also loved how the speech patterns helped separate the characters and show just how separated New World is. It gave me the idea to create better and more unique speech patterns for my characters in my own book to make them more distinguishable. Thanks Patrick Ness! (And Elizabeth Van Stenwyk who also mentioned to me about the importance of speech patterns but now I see why they are important).

The only problem that I had with the book was sometimes not being able to picture the scenery in my head. I feel that Ness either didn't give much description or I just got confused. A lot. But I can still imagine the scene going in my head without much background behind them although sometimes I thought "wait... wasn't that over there? How'd he get over there?"

In the end, The Knife of Never Letting Go was a great read and I cannot wait to get my hands on it's sequel The Ask and the Answer soon. I believe it's sequel is already out and the final book in the trilogy is coming soon.

I give this book:

8 1/2 Roses!