title: The Knife of Never Letting Go: Chaos Walking: Book One
author:  Patrick Ness 
description: Grade 9 UpTodd Hewitt lives in a world in which all women are dead, and the thoughts of men and animals are constantly audible as Noise. Graphically represented by a set of scratchy fonts and sentence fragments that run into and over each other, Noise is an oppressive chaos of words, images, and sounds that makes human company exhausting and no thought truly private. The history of these peculiar circumstances unfolds over the course of the novel, but Ness's basic world-building is so immediately successful that readers, too, will be shocked when Todd and his dog, Manchee, first notice a silence in the Noise. Realizing that he must keep the silence secret from the town leaders, he runs away, and his terrified flight with an army in pursuit makes up the backbone of the plot. The emotional, physical, and intellectual drama is well crafted and relentless. Todd, who narrates in a vulnerable and stylized voice, is a sympathetic character who nevertheless makes a few wrenching mistakes. Manchee and Aaron, a zealot preacher, function both as characters and as symbols. Tension, suspense, and the regular bombardment of Noise are palpable throughout, mitigated by occasional moments of welcome humor. The cliff-hanger ending is unexpected and unsatisfying, but the book is still a pleasure for sophisticated readers comfortable with the length and the bleak, literary tone.<i>Megan Honig, New York Public Library</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either
  products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
  
  Copyright © 2009 by Patrick Ness  
  Cover photographs: copyright © 2009 by Pierre Perrin/Sygma/Corbis (horsemen);
  copyright © 2009 by Julio Lopez Saguar/Photonica/Getty Images (clouds)
  
  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or
  stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means,
  graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and
  recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
  
  First U.S. electronic edition 2010
  
  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
  
  Ness, Patrick, date.  
  The Ask and the Answer : a novel / by Patrick Ness. — 1st ed.  
  p. cm. — (Chaos walking ; bk. 2)  
  Summary: Alternate chapters follow teenagers Todd and Vi