The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2)

by Patrick Ness

A special anniversary edition, with a striking new cover design, to celebrate 10 years of the Chaos Walking trilogy.

Fleeing before a relentless army, Todd and Viola once again face their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss. Immediately imprisoned and separated from Viola, Todd is forced to learn the ways of the Mayor's new order. And then, one day, the bombs begin to explode... This new edition marks the 10th anniversary of the Chaos Walking trilogy, soon to be a major motion picture starring Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley.

• ISBN10: 1406379174
• ISBN13: 9781406379174
• Publish Date: 1 February 2018 (first published 4 May 2009)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Walker Books Ltd
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 528
• Language: English

Reviews

[maggiefan]

I just can't with this book... I need time to process it.
But I definitely liked this book more than the first one.

[Kelly]

It's 3:20am and I've already begun Monsters of Men.
It's a Nessathon.

[Bianca]

We are the choices we make. And have to make. We aren’t anything else.

— As brilliant as its predecessor, dealing with issues like tyranny, terrorism, utilitarian genocide and the nature of morality.

[Stephanie]

I think reading this version on an ereader took away some of the charm the first book had. Good, but something preventing me from giving it five stars. I'm going to blame technology.

[nitzan_schwarz]

2014 cleaning my shelves challenge

[Amber]

Let me tell you about how I had my life ruined by aliens. The Knife of Never Letting Go was a great book. I loved it, and I've been recommending it like crazy. But The Ask and the Answer completely blows its predecessor out of the water. So much happens in such a (relatively) short book, it's a wonder people's heads don't explode while they're reading it. I loved it, and before writing this review I was going to just give it a 4 stars/Essential rating, but now I've decided to go with All Time Favourite. Because my life is ruined and I am crying.

So yes, the aliens. The Spackle absolutely broke my heart. I hate Tatum for not warning me, because she knows how I feel about these things (Spartacus has broken me). The Spackle have been oppressed since the war ended, first by the citizens of Haven who treated them as little more than slaves, and then under the rule of Mayor Prentiss, who went the whole hog and started tagging them like cattle and making them shit in a hole in the ground. These intelligent life forms were completely degraded, and it totally broke my heart. Not gonna lie, I'm crying while I write this. Their parts in The Ask and the Answer are the most prominent to me, and it's absolutely heartbreaking and tragic. Team Spackle FTW, everyone else can leave.

"We can fight," Davy says. "We proved that. And instead you got us babysitting animals that are already beat."
The Mayor considers us for a moment, tho I don't know how or when Davy turned him and me into an us. "If you think they're already beaten, David," he finally says, "then you know very little about the Spackle."

Todd drove me a little crazy in this book. I love him, I really do, but his decisions in The Ask and the Answer broke me. When his hope is taken away, he completely shuts off and forgets about fighting back. He becomes a drone for Mayor Prentiss, and it's awful to see. He does some sickening things, that would have made me hate him if I hadn't already read about him in The Knife of Never Letting Go. I'm looking forward to seeing more development from him in Monsters of Men (if I live through that book, which I doubt I will), because I have a feeling that he's going to rise up and become a great leader.

Viola, on the other hand, was pretty much flawless the entire way through. We get to see things from her point of view in this book, since she and Todd are separated for most of it. I spent most of the book fangirling over her, because she is so fucking strong and she faced so much, but she didn't give up. She also held onto her beliefs, and didn't let anyone or anything change that. Here, have some quotes.

"You haven't even seen me fight yet," I say, standing my ground. "I knocked down a bridge to stop an army. I put a knife through the neck of a crazy murderer. I saved the lives of others while you just ran around at night blowing them up."

As for the romance between Viola and Todd... Well, I can't say that I love it. It totally makes sense that they are clinging to each other and all that, but their relationship is just unhealthy. And also quite cheesy, but let's focus on the unhealthy part. They made some awful decisions because of one another, and I was sitting there wanting to shake them because it was so frustrating. But in a great way, because it provoked emotion from me. I mean, I get that they're very young, and they have no one else on this bloody planet, but STILL. I want them to just end up being best friends, if they both survive to the end of the series, because I think a strong platonic relationship usually works better. For me, anyway.

"Everyone here is someone's daughter," she says quietly. "Every soldier out there is someone's son. The only crime, the only crime is to take a life. There is nothing else."
"And that's why you don't fight," I say.
She turns to me sharply. "To live is to fight," she snaps. "To preserve life is to fight everything that man stands for."

"I won't tell you anything."
"But she betrayed you." The Mayor comes round the front again. "She tried to kill you."
And at that, Viola lifts her head.
She looks him right in the eye.
And says, "No, she tried to kill you."

He smiles. "You may have no choice."
"There's always a choice," Viola says by my side.

There are themes of anti-feminism and terrorism prevalent throughout this book, and Patrick Ness handles it all so well. He's so fucking talented. Of course, the bits that stuck out to me the most were the slavery, oppression, and genocide, but Ness packs so much into this book that it's bursting at the seams.

The ending completely destroyed me. WHAAAAT?!?!? I was hoping that something like that would happen, but I didn't think it actually would. As soon as I got to THE PART, I wanted to scream and cry and jump around my bedroom.

I cannot wait to read Monsters of Men, and I'm going to try desperately hard to read it this month. I don't know if it's going to happen, because I have so many review copies to read, but if not that I WILL be reading it in December. I adore this series, and I am almost ready to have my life ruined some more by Patrick Ness.

[Chelsea]

This is a ridiculously brilliant book. Seriously! It’s disturbing yet interesting. It picks off exactly where the first book left us. The way the author writes is amazing. You see exactly everything he’s trying to tell us. It’s hard to write a sequel that’s just as good as the first book but Patrick Ness did it. There’s way more plotting and political stuff in this book but it’s still as good as the first. A lot of people thought that the start was slow paced but I felt like it was necessary in order to understand a lot of things going on.

I like how you see more characters in this book too. You see a lot of Todd and Viola of course but there’s also the mayor, his son and lots of brand new characters. Viola is always fighting, the whole book she never stops which makes her a great heroine. Then there’s Todd who i honestly thought was going to switch sides but he did ok in the end. They’re both such great characters. I also loved Lee because he was a much needed funny and happy character. It was a good addition t a pretty depressing book. Mayor Prentis is a crazy villain. He’s fantastic but completely evil at the same time. Not gonna lie I actually liked Davy. I felt really bad for him though. He just wanted his father’s praise.

This was a fantastic book. If you haven’t already read it. Do it now.

[nannah]

Oh my . . . oh my god. I can't even form coherent thoughts right now. I probably should wait at least a day before I review this book just so I can actually think.

Because the first book was driven, focused, a beautiful telling, but the second book is where Patrick Ness's genius absolutely leaps off the page and grabs you. All those plot twists, character arcs, the meticulous planning of events, they could only be thought up by a genius. I've decided. Ness is a genius. A masterful storyteller. He knows how leave readers dying for the next page, how to make his characters and relationships fester in one's mind until they have to pick the book back up again. He knows people, too. Real people, not just characters slapped on a page. These are real, breathing people with minds and personalities of their own as complex as people I know (heck, even more so). What would this character do in this situation? It seems as if most writers put down what THEY want the character to do to further the plot. What Ness does is listen to the character. These are all actions of the characters, not the writer. I rarely ever see this done well. Perfect, actually.

I can't praise this book highly enough. It made me feel every emotion, and not just feel it, suffer it. This book is TERRIBLY traumatic. I might have been screaming as I was reading it and freaking out those around me. The manipulation, the thought processes, they were all so traumatic because they were so believable and well-written.

I'd also like to point out the absolute flawlessness of Viola and Todd's relationship. It's not even something easily explained, because it, like the characters themselves, is complex and so, so very genuine.

Again, this man is a genius. A storytelling genius. I know I'm gushing, but I can't seem to stop. This trilogy gets inside my head and I can't think of anything else. One of my favorite books, hands down. I don't think I'll ever get over it.