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 "Men are Noisy creachers."

 - Todd Hewitt

This novel is set some time in the far future (I think), on a planet peopled by religious settlers who look to avoid the problems of the Old World, including most technology. But a lot went wrong since that first landing. A war occurred with the planet's alien inhabitants, who released the 'Noise germ'.

There's no escaping Noise, not nowhere at all. Not here, not nowhere. Not when yer asleep, not when yer by yerself, never.

This germ made it so that everyone would be able to hear everyone else's thoughts, including animals. It also killed off half the men and ALL the women and girls.

At least, this is the grim reality as understood by the story's protagonist, Todd Hewitt. He is the last boy in the troubled village of Prentisstown. He's 12 years and 12 months old. Which, according to this novel, leaves him one more month until he becomes 13, or ... a man. After an accident in a swamp, Todd is told that he has to flee town because something terrible will happen on his birthday when he becomes a man.

Life ain't fair. It ain't. Not never. It's pointless and stupid and there's only suffering and pain an people who want to hurt you.

The story has a lot of emphasis on keeping Todd innocent. There are also themes of gender issues, and religious ideas about man's fall from innocence that are touched upon.

The lesson of forever and ever is that knowing a man's mind ain't knowing the man.

Ahem, are these samples of the book annoying you? DON'T let the writing scare you away from reading this novel. Okay, Todd's dialect drove me crazy initially. BUT, it actually become really natural after about 20% in. I really came to appreciate it and it just added even more clarification on how different this book is. It immersed me into Todd's character, and his mind-set. His whole society is based on the repression of the written word, and Todd's poor grasp of spelling was clearly obvious.

So why the three stars? In this case, it turned out to be a "it's not you, it's me" thing. I have a very low patience threshold, and this book really put me to the test. The book is just way too cryptic.
Why exactly does Todd have to leave?
Why does Prentisstown want him back so badly?
What did Todd see in other men's noises?
What happens to boys when they become men?! And why is it such a taboo?
We don't know anything!

And as we very quickly realize, Todd doesn't really know a whole lot. He often has a very ignorant view of the world.
The answers to the askings felt like they were never going to come.
I don't mind it when we don't know things and we learn it along with the characters but the thing is, Todd did find answers! He just decides not to share it with us. Not cool Todd. Not cool.

The author also constantly interrupts any scene where important revelations seem imminent. E.g. 'The person who killed Professor Plum is ... oops! I had better take this phone call.'
Ugh! Ness intentionally hid information and it annoyed me a lot.

When we did get answers after 400 pages of build up and suspense, they were very unsatisfying and needed more impact. I won't even get started on that cliff-hanger ending!

Also, the enemies, while thoroughly bad and endowed with a Terminator-like ability to keep reappearing, weren't fleshed out as characters and I found their motives unclear.

After seeing the tons of run-on sentences in this book, I listened to a sample of the audio book to see how the poor narrator did. It was gnarly! His Todd and Manchee impression were spot on. There was also some sonic distortion as cue to the noise, which I thought was perfect. The audio was awesome and I most definitely would have given this book 4 stars if I had listened to it instead of reading.

I wouldn't recommend this to very young readers as the book gets very intense in spots. There's also some amount of profanity, though Todd disguises it with "effin". Lol by the way.

Despite the its flaws, I give The Knife of Never Letting Go an overall thumbs-up. The Noise idea and the character voices were so well realized and there was a lot of affecting scenes. The animal scenes were very cleverly done. The plot premise was very original and the story haunted my imagination a little.

Buddy read with Petra, Elise, Ivy, and Emily.

3 - 3.5 stars