Reviews with content warning for Animal death - The Knife of Never Letting Go

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The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

102 reviews

yasaman's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

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nannahnannah's review against another edition

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5.0

Okay, so this is one of my all-time favorites, but I hadn’t read it for many, many years, so I was a bit nervous coming back in for another read. Luckily, most of it still stands up, and I still count it among my favorites, but there were some things that bothered me more than (most likely, lmao) it did in the past.

Settlers left the Old World for a simpler, better, and more peaceful life guided by God. Unfortunately, the hardships of New World didn’t allow that to happen: infertile soil, foreign diseases … and the Spackle, an alien race the initial scouts failed to discover. Todd Hewitt, the last boy in his town (who will become a man in thirty days) has grown up on this strange New World, where all men can hear each other’s thoughts in Noise, a jumble of words, thoughts, feelings, and pictures. Women never had Noise, but then, they were all killed off by the Spackle disease in the war before Todd was born.

Todd doesn’t know what will happen when he becomes a man, but he knows it’s important, because all of the friends he had don’t talk to him any more, not since they became men themselves. But when he discovers a pocket of silence -- an impossible area of no Noise at all, an actual, living girl -- the town’s secrets (and the entire New World’s) start to spill over.

The concept of this is so original and kept my attention to the very end (which is a cliffhanger … beware). The main two characters are very well described and realized, with, let’s be honest, major flaws. But that’s what I love about them. Even when I’m so almost unbearably angry at them, it’s wonderful because I’m angry at them for being so well-realized, not for being stupid for the plot’s sake or awfully written.

The writing is kind of a mixed bag. On one hand, it makes the action and emotion very immediate. It’s written in a dialogue style, using misspelled words and incorrect grammar -- mostly because our protagonist can’t read and has a southern-style accent (ish). While this can be super, incredibly annoying, this is probably the only book where it works more than it doesn’t. I think because even without the use of the dialogue, the writing is still very strong (as compared to, and I’m sorry, but Blood Red Road by Moira Young, where her style was a crutch rather than something to add to her world and story). However, reading The Knife of Never Letting Go this time around, there were things from the style that bugged me, like the use of “effing” -- where once or twice it would be okay, but several times it became way … way too much (“and I didn’t say ‘effing’ either”; “and do you think I said ‘effing’”?, etc.). The misspelled words didn’t bother me as much as I thought they would, but eff, those effing words just took me right out of the story.

Lastly, I just want to touch on the gender thing the book has going on. I was hoping upon reread there would be hints of something in regard to other genders, but -- at least in the first book here -- there was nothing. I know Patrick Ness supports trans people and he talks about them often in interviews about how he’s very excited to read and support books by trans authors, so he’s (probably) not transphobic, which is great. So maybe this was just something he … overlooked about 10+ years ago, or became aware of later. But in any case, the whole “women have no noise, men have noise, and that’s IT” is a little uncomfortable to read as someone who’s non binary. Where would people like me fit in?

Anyway, I’m unbelievably happy to find out that this book is still one of my favorites.

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roenfoe's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

The Knife of Never Letting Go has been a highly anticipated read for me since I first heard of the Chaos Walking trilogy a few years ago. While my overall reading experience was enjoyable and I plan to continue with the series, there were a few aspects that detracted from its overall quality.

From the start and all throughout, TKONLG had me hooked. It's been a while since I have read a thriller-esque story and I had forgotten how fun a page-turner can be. I really enjoyed the writing style at first, but found myself skipping some descriptive language later on where the repetitive waffle was at its zenith. However, even with the tense plot and my anticipation, this novel managed to drag around the 350 page mark. Following

the initial escape from Farbranch, the plot became extremely formulaic. Escape a town, continue down the road, discover a new town with a new dynamic, rinse and repeat

. The three main characters and many of the side characters were the highlight of this novel. I became surprisingly invested in the relationship between Todd and Viola, not to mention the endearing Manchee. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the villains. Their plot armour was painfully obvious and their motives cartoonish. I hope that more depth is added to their side of the story in the sequel. The main characters experienced comically bad luck throughout, to the point where it became easy to predict what would happen next. This also removed an element of suspense; if everything always goes wrong, you lose the will-they-won't-they feeling. Finally, that cliffhanger was ridiculous. It did its job (made me want to read the next book) but there was no element of closure or conclusion, something that is necessary in a five hundred page book.

I really liked TKONLG- it was great, but not earth shattering. I hope that the sequel improves on some of these issues.

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