Chaos Walking
The first book in the trilogy, The Knife of Never Letting Go
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| Author | Patrick Ness |
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| Cover artist | Lynne Condellon (design) John Picacio (painting) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Young adult science fiction, dystopian adventure |
| Publisher | Walker Books |
| Published | 2008–2010 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover, paperback) |
Chaos Walking is a young adult science fiction series by the U.S.-born British novelist Patrick Ness. It is set in a dystopian world where all living creatures can hear each other's thoughts in a stream of images, words, and sounds called Noise. The series is named after a line in the first book: "The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking." The series consists of a trilogy of novels and three short stories.
The three novels feature two children, Todd Hewitt and Viola Eade, who encounter various moral issues and high stakes as the planet around them erupts into war. The Knife of Never Letting Go (2008) begins with Todd being forced to flee his town after discovering a patch of silence, free of Noise. In the second book, The Ask and the Answer (2009), tensions rise as a civil war between two opposing factions forms, and in the final book, Monsters of Men (2010) the indigenous species of New World rebels against the humans just as a ship full of new settlers is set to arrive on the planet. The series has won almost every major children's fiction award in the UK, including the 2008 Guardian award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and the Costa Children's Book Award. Monsters of Men won the Carnegie Medal in 2011. The series has been praised for its handling of themes such as gender politics, redemption, the meaning of war, and the unclear distinction between good and evil, all threaded through its complex, fast-paced narrative.
The first novel is narrated entirely by Todd, the second is told through the viewpoints of both Todd and Viola and the third book is narrated by Todd, Viola and The Return.
Ness claims that the idea for Chaos Walking came from "one really serious idea and one fairly stupid idea": how information overload affects youth, and how most fictional talking dogs "never actually talk like... I think dogs would actually talk". Ness planned the series as a trilogy from the start, deciding to theme Knife about flight, Ask about tyranny and Monsters about war.
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