Book Review - The Knife Of Never Letting Go

This is one quirky book. I liked it, I really did. But it had a weird-ass plot and really strange characters....somehow it all came together into a pretty decent book that was hard to put down.

I promise to do this review without any spoilers. Everything I'm about to tell you happened in the first two chapters.

Todd is the youngest boy in a settlement of 149 men. Men only. They are colonists who settled on this New World. Except when they landed, the resident aliens launched a bio attack that killed all the women and now all the men can hear each other's thoughts.

Yeah, weird, I know.

Not only can they hear each other, but they can hear all the animals. Todd's only friend is his dog.

The book is really hard to read. The grammar, spelling, and punctuation is all in the vernacular of an uneducated 12 year old boy who can't read. It makes the first chapter a little hard to suffer through. But Todd and his dog find this really weird quiet space where he can't hear anyone's thoughts. He goes home to tell his dad about it, and then it gets really weird.

His dad is overcome with fear. He pulls out an already packed backpack filled with food and tells Todd to run for his life. Dad grabs a rifle and turns to meet a posse heading up to the farm ready to kill Todd. The poor kid has no idea what's happening. As the reader, you have to keep reading just to find out what it all means.

You'd think in world where everyone's thoughts are public, there would be no secrets. Just the opposite actually. See there's nothing but NOISE. Just chaos and sound. The adult men also have ways to hide their thoughts, mediation tricks and chanting. It's harder for 12 year old Todd, so they often know what he's thinking.

I have to say, I never read a book that had better cliffhangers than this one. Every single chapter ended in such a crazy, unexpected way that I had to turn the page. Each time I said to myself, just one more page, but it never ended there. You get used to the vernacular after a while and start tearing through the pages. I do recommend this book because it was darn entertaining despite it's weirdness. It keeps you on the edge of your seat, heart pumping at times. Before you pick it up, know that it is a series. So don't expect a neatly packaged ending.