Review: The Knife of Never Letting Go

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

☆☆☆
Science Fiction — Post-Apocalyptic/Dystopian

It’s hard to classify this one. It feels the most like a post-apocalyptic story, but that’s not exactly what it is. It’s Tom Sawyer meets Maze Runner with a dash of Hunger Games, at least in the feel of it.

It is expertly written. The world-building is great with important elements introduced naturally; no info-dumping. The pacing is solid, though the book is non-stop running from bad guys. It’s in first person present tense, which I hate, yet it didn’t bother me at all in this case. The author pulled it off, and it worked.

Our protagonist, Todd, is looking forward to being a Man when he turns 13. He is very pig-headed, which sometimes is a good thing and sometimes works against him. The author was skilled at using this character.

Because Todd is so pig-headed, it takes 80 percent of the book to find out what the Big Secret is. This is partly because he refuses to hear it or refuses to ask, but also because whenever someone starts talking about it, they get shot at or have some other big interruption. Getting information out of this story is like pulling teeth with just your thumbs.

The book includes the trope that religious = crazy/homicidal. It’s not as bad as some other stories, but it’s there, and it’s getting old. The villain is a Crazy Homicidal Religious Nut (TM) who refuses to die. Something kills him …



… again …



… and again …



… until you’re like …



And when you realize that’s the WHOLE PLOT, it starts to drag.

There’s a dog in the story. If you need to know whether the dog survives, I reveal it at the very end here.

I have to confess, I’m really not a dog person. I’m sorry. I only like dogs that have been trained to not bark 24/7, so that’s about 5 percent of all dogs. The dog here is extremely annoying, and I quickly began rooting for his death. Todd should have smacked him a lot more, and harder.



At one point in the story, Todd throws his book away. I was anxiously waiting for him to pick it up again, but he never does, and then it suddenly appears in his pack again. Did I miss something? I was listening very carefully. How did he get his book back?

I never felt emotionally connected to the characters. I sort of related to Todd, and that’s about it. And I hated the dog!

The book ends on a big cliffhanger. No single plotline is resolved here; there is no self-contained story. So you have to commit to the trilogy before beginning.

 

The book is well done on all levels. I liked it despite my issues with it. The audio narration is nicely done and uses audio effects to portray some of the Noise scenes.

Todd uses the word “effing” a lot and will sometimes say he said the actual word, but the actual word is also said plainly several times. Violence is graphic at times.

Spoiler ahead … 




The dog dies.