Knife Edge (Noughts and Crosses, #2)

by Malorie Blackman

WHEN TRUTH AND JUSTICE ARE NO LONGER BLACK AND WHITE ISSUES . . .

Sephy is a Cross, one of the privileged in a society where the ruling Crosses treat the pale-skinned noughts as inferiors. But her baby daughter has a nought father . . . Jude is a Nought. Eaten up with bitterness, he blames Sephy for the terrible losses his family has suffered . . .

Now Jude's life rests on a knife edge. Will Sephy be forced, once again, to take sides?

A razor-sharp and intensely moving novel, the second in the Noughts & Crosses sequence.

• ISBN10: 0552548928
• ISBN13: 9780552548922
• Publish Date: 30 June 2005 (first published 5 February 2004)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 10 August 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Children's UK
• Imprint: Corgi Childrens
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[abookishblether]

Sadly, I don't this this series is going to hold up to a re-read.

[Leah]

What a magnificent read. No, it wasn't the same as Noughts and Crosses but after what happened at the end of N&C it could never be. It had to be a different book. And it was. And that worked. The addition of Jude narrating was a master stroke because while Jude is perhaps a Marmite character, I like him. I feel like there's something in him that's redeemable (although after reading Knife Edge perhaps I'm wrong because what he does is actually disgusting). But despite everything he does, I still like Jude as a character. I feel like he has so much depth.

The hardest part to read is Sephy. After everything she went through previously, it had to change her in some ways and while she's still the same old Sephy in some ways, mostly that's gone. This is a different girl. And it's heartbreaking to see her suffering. It's heartbreaking to read everything she's going through because I just wanted to take away her pain and I couldn't.


Knife Edge was vastly different to Noughts and Crosses. In tone. In voice. But I still loved it. I still races through it and this is such a compelling series, such a thought-provoking read. I have no idea where books three and four will take this series but I'm so interested to go there with them because Malorie Blackman is an incredible writer.