The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

Read by Nick Podehl

I am so mad at this book, I don’t know where to start. It began so well, and kept getting even better—

This is a YA science fiction novel that’s so well-conceived and beautifully written that it has tremendous crossover potential (crossing over both into adult SF, and SF for non-SF readers). It starts in a failed colony on a planet called New World. The protagonist, Todd Hewitt, is a month shy of his 13th birthday, and he’s the last child in a dying town—a town populated entirely by men, because the women all died shortly after Todd was born.

Surprisingly, that’s not even the worst of it. In this town, the men all broadcast all of their thoughts and feelings all the time—they can’t help it. They call it Noise, and there’s no escape from it. Even the animals produce Noise: the germ that caused it in humans (and killed all the women) infected pets, livestock, and native species as well.

As the book opens, our protagonist is outside of town foraging for fruit when he hears… silence. For the first time in his life. He has no idea what to make of it—and before he can figure it out, the silence moves.

I can’t say more than that without giving away too much; this book is super plot-focused. But it explores, with fierce courage and without ever, ever lecturing or talking down even a tiny bit, the nature of love, and violence, and truth, and manhood, and gender, and guilt, and of course communication. I found the story deeply compelling, and the characters incredibly moving and real.

And then that goddamn ending. I’m not sure I can describe it as a cliffhanger. The author didn’t introduce a new plot element or storyline and then leave you to wonder where it could lead; instead, he got you so worried and worked up about what kind of resolution he was leading to—and then he just ended the book. Nothing’s resolved, the tension is sky high, and sayonara. Want more? Read the next book.

There is a next book. And I will be reading it, once I’m done being mad about this one. But, dammit, this is not how a cliffhanger is done. Clearly this should have been one longer book, not two shorter ones.

I’m not sure what led the author and/or publisher to decide to end this book like this. I suppose they get more money for two shorter books than for one longer one? I hate to impute such a motive to someone who has written what is, apart from that, a wonderful, empathic, utterly alien and utterly human story. But I don’t know what else it could be.

Do read this book. I recommend the audiobook version, if you like that sort of thing; the narrator is spot on. But plan on having book two, The Ask and the Answer, on hand for when you finish. Otherwise you may well end up throwing The Knife of Never Letting Go across the room. Hard enough to break something.