Review: The Knife of Never Letting go by Patrick Ness

Title: The Knife of Never Letting go

The Knife of Never letting go. Standard Cover

Author: Patrick Ness

Publisher: Walker Books Ltd.

This is the first instalment of the “Chaos Walking” series and is followed by “The Ask and the Answer” When has recently been released.

This book is about the only boy in a world of men. All the women died of a mysterious illness and Todd Hewitt was the last child born before this. Not only that but in this world everyone can hear each other’s thoughts and there is no privacy. So as you can guess, life hasn’t been easy for Todd but just one month before the birthday that will make him a man he finds out that the town has been lying to him and he is suddenly running from the only place he knows and he doesn’t know why. All he has is his pet dog (who talks) and a diary his mother kept before she died including a map pointing to a place with no name. Sounds promising doesn’t it?

I liked this book. I didn’t love it but I liked it. It is a very well thought out book with a load of imagination that is only to be expected from such an accomplished author but even though it had a lot of action in it, I didn’t go “wow!”. I found the language used in it a bit slow-moving and it doesn’t keep your attention. I’d recommend it to age 12+ as there is some gruesome imagery. It is quite violent but for the most part there is a lot of walking from one place to the other with no direction BUT I will read the sequel just to see what happens to the characters.

Rating: 7/10

What to read next: The Ask and the answer. (Book 2)

Also By Patrick Ness:

Topics about which I know nothing

Monsters of Men