October Meeting Recap

We discussed The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness while enjoying some Javier's Mexican food.

The book is sci-fi and is set on another planet. Human beings came to colonize this particular planet and obliterated the native inhabitants, the Spackle, in a war. Todd, the main character who is a month away from 13 on a 13-month calendar (so he's 14 to us). He has been living in Prentistown and has learned the history of the place. In the war the Spackle relied on biowarfare and released a virus that killed all of the women and half of the men. It also created Noise, which made everyone's thoughts audible and visible to everyone around them. Todd is the youngest member of this society and is being raised by Ben and Cillian, who had been friends of his mother. As he approaches manhood at 13 years old, Ben and Cillian start him on a path that reveals the secrets and lies that his childhood has been based on.

We all seemed to like the concept of Noise in the book. The point was raised that Ness got the idea from how connected we are because of cell phones and pagers and such. The strange spelling was a bit irritating, but was probably showing us the lack of education. This book is probably not a good model for weak or struggling writers or readers.

Secret keeping was a big issue--how can anyone keep a secret when your thoughts are audible? Ben and Cillian's ability to keep the town's secret from Todd and plan for his eventual escape was a bit implausible.

The dog should have lived. Aaron is a big jerk.

We did spend a lot of time on Manchee. It was interesting to see Todd's perception change over the course of the book. At first he didn't want the dog, but then his whole world changed and Manchee became his best friend. Manchee was undoubtably one of the strong points of the book. Ness really captured the "voice" of a dog!

Most of us found the ending to be interesting and infuriating at once. The twist with the sacrifice was interesting, the end of their quest was infuriating. A few are interested in the second book in the trilogy.