The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1)

by Patrick Ness

Humphrey Bower (Narrator), Chris Chapple, and Prithvi Varatharajan

This is an unflinching novel about the impossible choices of growing up, by an award-winning writer.Imagine you're the only boy in a town of men. And you can hear everything they think. And they can hear everything you think. Imagine you don't fit in with their plans...Todd Hewitt is just one month away from the birthday that will make him a man. But his town has been keeping secrets from him. Secrets that are going to force him to run...

• ISBN13: 9781742677019
• Publish Date: 1 February 2011 (first published 5 May 2008)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: AU
• Publisher: Bolinda Publishing
• Imprint: Bolinda Audio Books
• Edition: Unabridged edition
• Format: Audiobook (MP3)
• Duration: 12 hours and 29 minutes
• Language: English

Reviews

[Chelsea]

I was really impressed by this book. I loved everything about it, even the things I hated. If you can’t push through some misspelled words then this book is not for you. Everyone else, what are you waiting for? This book was crazy. I didn’t like Todd at first, but he got better during the book. Thankfully. I loved his dog Manchee, easily my favorite character. I actually liked all of the characters in this book.

The plot was fantastic as well! From the interesting start to the cliffhanger at the end. Todd has to travel to a completely different town to escape his original town full of crazy, mind-reading men. The book had a nice pace and is always keeping you guessing as to what happens next.

[Amber]

4.5 XD Full review here: http://www.booksofamber.com/2012/08/the-knife-of-never-letting-go-by.html

Forking forker killed the dog! STILL crying over that.

So they have seven months until Viola's people arrive, and then they won't know where to find her 'cause she destroyed her tracker. Uh-oh.

And why don't these people die?! Aaron is bloody immortal, and Davy seemed to be as well. Bloody hell.

An older book, that every one of you has probably read already, but I wanted to share my thoughts on it. This was recommended to me by Daph, after it had been sitting on my bookshelf for almost a year, and last month I finally got around to reading it.

The Knife of Never Letting Go was so much fun to read, and I ended up loving it just as much as I had expected to, given the hype surrounding it. Patrick Ness has created a wonderful world to set his story, and one of the best parts of the book was the various settings we were introduced to throughout the novel.

The writing style is very different to anything I have read before. This is set in a futuristic society, that isn't even all that futuristic as people seem to have gone back to humanity's roots, and the people in this novel have their own original take on the English language. It took me a couple of chapters to get used to the writing style, but it took less time than I would have expected because the story and characters sucked me in.

This book is also fantastic because it has more adventure and action than romance, something that I adored about it. I think it could be enjoyed immensely by any gender, given the focus on the story rather than a love interest.

The Knife of Never Letting Go was a thrilling ride, and I cannot wait to read the sequel. I bought The Ask and the Answer a while ago, and while I'm not planning on reading it until I buy Monsters of Men, I am so excited to dive back in!

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

While i did enjoy this book, I did take issues with some of it. For starters Manchee was really annoying and while dogs do act that way (apart from talking) i think the dog did throw the story off a little for me. Also censorship did get on my nerves, I don’t like it, never have never will; I know that it was bec ause it was a YA book and he didn’t want to expose the readers to that, but there is probably a better way to express frustrasion and anger without pretending to curse.

Apart from those issues, the book does a great job of progressing the story and held my interest all the way till the end. Its a great YA novel, but be warned cliffhanger at the end will make you want to read the next one pretty much straight away.