The Knife of Never Letting Go Author: Patrick Ness | Language: English | ISBN:
B0044UHVR2 | Format: EPUB
The Knife of Never Letting Go Description
Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him -- something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn't she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd's gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is. Includes “The New World,” a short story by Patrick Ness.
- File Size: 2086 KB
- Print Length: 497 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0763645761
- Publisher: Candlewick; Reprint edition (October 18, 2010)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0044UHVR2
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #18,234 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #85
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Action & Adventure
- #85
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Action & Adventure
On a far-flung world newly settled by humanity, twelve-year-old Todd Hewitt of Prentisstown is a boy on the brink of becoming a man.
When settlers came to this world, they found it already inhabited by aliens known as the Spackle, and a war was waged against them to colonize the planet. Now, almost twenty years after the first settlers landed, the world is low-tech but free of the "spacks." However, they left behind them the "Noise germ," a chemical contaminant that causes all the men who come in contact with it to broadcast their thoughts for everyone's hearing--and kills all the infected women.
On the eve of his thirteenth birthday, Todd has never seen a woman. He was the last child born in the settlement before his mother succumbed to the Noise germ and died, and now he's the only boy left in the village of Prentisstown, all the others having turned thirteen and been proclaimed men. Now, with Todd's birthday approaching, the entire town is anxious, and Todd can hear it.
The men of the town are keeping something from him; although they can hear each other think, it's possible to learn techniques that allow one to control the information that others can hear. Ben and Cillian, his adoptive guardians and old friends of his parents, are both worried for him, though Todd doesn't know why.
And then, with less than a month to go until Todd's thirteenth birthday, he stumbles across a secret that no boy is meant to know and all men have been forced to forget, a secret about the history of his world and the lies he's been told. Todd has no choice but to escape from the town he's called his home and the people who have been his parents, on the run from something more terrible than the alien Spackle, and more familiar.
If you read the Amazon reviews of THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO you will see many 5-star ratings from readers and only a few 1 and 2-star ratings.
I am in the 1-star camp and let me tell you why:
If you read the 5-star reviewers, you will see that many of these folks reacted to Patrick Ness writing which, in it's essence, is very creative and skillful. He knows how to write an economical sentence and sketch in a character. He is not afraid to try fresh and daring constructions of words on the page. His presentation of telepathy is original, interesting, and very well handled so that you do believe: "Yes this is what if would be like if you could hear everyone's thoughts." So I can understand many readers being hooked. But even among the 5-star reviewers you find people who say: "I loved and hated this book."
Let's look at why you might hate it:
Where Ness fails almost completely is as a storyteller. Rather than taking the time to construct authentically believable dramatic situations, Ness seems to think that the shortest path to drama is violence. The beatings start on page 6 and are followed by stabbings, shootings, kickings, guns, knives, machetes, maiming and gruesome killings. When the plot of endless pursuit on a frontier planet called New World slows down, it usually offers a brutal scene of struggle & capture. I am not a reader who objects to violence, but I do object when it is pointless and offered in place of a story. This random violence is not drama -- it is melodrama and a shameless manipulation to jerk the readers emotions around. You know it's melodrama for one simple reason: the bad guys NEVER have a problem finding our protagonists and tormenting them.
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