The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

In the book, The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness, the main character Todd Hewitt goes on a long and suspenseful journey with his dog Manchee and a girl named Viola, who he found in the swamp next to his house. He lives on the planet called New World, where there is a natural occurring phenomenon that allows you to hear the thoughts of any man or animal around you, but women have a distinct silence to their thoughts. There are no women in his village, except for Viola, but no one else she knows that she is there. Todd is forced to run a way from his village with his dog and the mysterious girl Viola, after the town officials come to talk to him and his guardians Ben and Cillian, and they tell him to run. His journey lasts very long and he visits many towns that he did not even know existed. But he was always on the run because his entire village was following him and pillaging all of the other small towns that they passed. Todd and Viola’s goal is to get to a city called Haven, but they need to follow many twists and turns in order to get there. This was a fairly good book, the whole idea of noise, which is the idea that you can hear everything that men and animals are saying, is very strange, yet clever. “Flesh and feast and tooth and I swear it’s getting closer,” (59) says the crocodile that is approaching them. Every time Todd thinks in his head Viola can hear him so it’s impossible to keep a secret. The setting moves around a lot since they are always town to town. The pace is good, but it gets fairly slow at times. I would recommend this book to someone who has a lot of time on their hands. People that like action and fantasy would love this book.