What's so weird about Prentisstown? Well, there are no women in Prentisstown, for starters, and there's also this weird germ called Noise that makes everyone's thoughts loud enough for everyone else to hear. There's a boy named Todd who lives in this weird place called Prentisstown with his dog, Manchee.

The other books in the series include: The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men.The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking #1) Summary This engaging and thought-provoking book is highly recommended for readers, both adult and teen, men and women, who enjoy dystopian realism with a science fiction twist. Questions of how constant connection to one another’s inner-most thoughts can permeate and shape our society are also forced to be confronted. Todd’s revelations throughout the book will stir the most basic feelings in readers, as so much that was once known is proven false. The first book in the Chaos Walking trilogy, this book is fast-paced and addictive, even if the title is awkward. Patrick Ness crafts the story using first-person narrative interspersed with stream-of-consciousness that expertly links the protagonist to the reader’s psyche and implicates the chaos that comes from permeating thoughts. Along with Manchee, a pack with food, clothes, meds and a diary left to him by his mother, Todd is persuaded to leave…his adoptive parents had been planning his escape for eleven years, but why? Pursued by the men of Prentisstown, they find the quiet in the swamp, a girl, who by all reason shouldn’t be alive.Īs the story unfolds, the reader is taken on an elaborate journey through the history of New World, Prentisstown and Todd’s struggle into manhood. He tries to hide it, but eventually reveals his discovery through his Noise and he is suddenly being hunted. Alone, wandering with his dog, Manchee, he discovers something quiet in the swamp, something quiet and moving. Frustrated at being the only boy left, Todd sees the incomprehensible changes in the people he’s known once they become men…once they shut him out.

He has never known a world without Noise. There is no escaping the Noise.īorn after the war with the natives, Todd Hewitt is one month from his birthday…from becoming a man, and is the youngest person in Prentisstown, and, for all he knows, New World. Every man and beast is infected with the Noise germ, projecting every thought, idea and feeling for all to hear. Just over twenty years ago, human settlers arrived and began to build a new society, but they were not alone.

The knife of never letting go series