Dannii Elle's Reviews > The Knife of Never Letting Go

This is the first instalment of the Chaos Walking series.

The book opens in Prentisstown, a fictional town in a fictional world. The occupants of this town are predominately farmers, entirely male and, oh, they can all hear each other's every thought.

The reader is immediately introduced, in the form of first person narration, to the first protagonist, who remains with us for all three of the books, Todd. Now I initially found Todd an unlikable main character: he appeared moody, quarrelsome and quick-tempered. This was something I could abide with, as I foresaw a personal transformation as the book progressed. It transpired that events in Todd's short life gave him every right to act as the petulant child that he was. It was the honest, considerate man he quickly became who gained my heart, though.

Now I know that many people find untrustworthy and initially unrelatable characters a bit of a faux pas, but this only depicted to me that Ness was not afraid to transgress the boundaries of what is deemed 'acceptable' in writing.

And he doesn't stop there.

This book is a series of shock after shocks as Ness continually took you to the limits of your expectations and then transgressed them. This book featured continual cliffhangers and false hopes as Ness lay the foundations for the climax of the novel. Or should I say climaxes, plural. This book is synonymous with choppy waters as you crested a wave not knowing if you'd find calm waters or rapids beyond it.

And one such climacteric moment was the introduction of our second protagonist, Viola. The chance meeting between Todd and herself altered the course of the story and aligned two separate stories as one.

The first-person style of narration highlighted that the inner-thoughts of the protagonist weren't always what was revealed in his Noise (or, thoughts). Noise was a precarious thing, only revealing a portion of the man beneath the outward portrayal of his thoughts. This, combined with Ness' beautiful writing gave a rich, dense narrative that stunned, staggered and surprised me.

I have honestly never read something so richly-coated with action and substance in such equal measures. This book, and this series, is like no other!