Review | The Knife of Never Letting Go

The Book: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

Date Published: October 18, 2010

Dates Read: November 28 – December 11, 2017

Current Goodreads Rating: 3.96/5

So I finished The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness and, oh boy, it was a doozy. Here’s the thing: I hated it. However, it wasn’t the kind of hate where I just couldn’t finish the story.

In my opinion, there are two types of hating a book. There’s the first type where a book is just so unbelievably bad that you can’t even begin to understand how it was allowed to become a physical book. I have come across several of those kinds of books in my time and the best thing to do is just give up and move on to something better. I, luckily, only had to deal with one of those books this year. (It was called Winger and keep an eye on this site in the next week because I will be giving you my thoughts on how shit it was.)

The second type of hating a book is where you hate what happens in a book so much that you can feel that rage in the bottom of your soul. That is what makes a book good. Yes, a good book is a book that makes you so happy you always have it on your bedside table, but a good book is also a book that makes you so angry you want to throw it across the room.

There is a reason why The Order of the Phoenix is my favorite Harry Potter book. Of

the seven books, that book makes me feel the most. I want to punch Umbridge in her stupid face. Having once been a teenager (and now, thankfully, older and wiser) I understand Harry’s confusion and anger, but I’m exasperated by his sheer stupidity at times. In fact, the majority of the things I feel about that book are not positive emotions and that is why I love it so much.

The same can be said about The Knife of Never Letting Go. I felt the loss of Manchee throughout the novel like a toothache. Occasionally I would forget the dog was gone and then I’d think,

“Wait. Why is Manchee so quiet? …Oh. Right.”

This book is not an upbeat read. Todd is fleeing for his life for about 90% of the pages and the life lessons he learns along the way are hard and the losses he suffers are wrenching. I was exhausted with him, I grieved with him, I was disgusted along side him when he learned the terrible truth about Prentisstown.

When Manchee died I told myself that I wasn’t going to keep reading the series. The murder of Manchee was too much to handle, but that changed at the end of Knife. That cliffhanger got me so good that I’m already reading book two of the series The Ask and The Answer. How can a bleak series get bleaker? Only time will tell.

The not so good: Some kind of mild spoilers ahead so be aware.

Aaron.

The best way I can describe Aaron is a psychopath. He’s like what I’d imagine the founder of the West Borough Baptist church would act like if he lived in the near future on a developing planet.

He is a crazy Energizer bunny. There are at least 3 separate instances where Todd is caught by Aaron, mangles him in some way in order to escape, and leaves him for dead only to run into him 20 pages later, a little more grizzled than before, but no less alive.

I kid you not, Aaron has half of his face eaten by a fucking crocodile and he still manages to chase Todd across the country. I get this is a new world with a crazy amount of future tech that can save lives and all that jazz, but a fucking crocodile eats his face in a swamp and he doesn’t die. How does that not immediately kill him?

Long story short:

· At no point is killing your animal characters ok – once again, cut that shit out.

· This book made me mad, but that’s ok

· Aaron. Just. Die. Already.

Am I going to read the other books in the series: Like I said earlier, yeah, I’ve already started the second one, but I started it begrudgingly because R.I.P. Manchee. I’m already several chapters in.

My Rating: 4/5