Today's world of young adult fiction is full of dystopian tales, many of them quite openly and obviously inspired by one another (or mostly The Hunger Games). Chaos Walking, while set in a rather dystopian society as well, is very much unlike everything else, and not just because of the obvious - the deliberate choice of language/style, or being set in a distant world.
I started with The Knife of Never Letting Go (which is recommended, by the way - leave The New World, although it's a prequel, until after you've read the trilogy!). And .. I admit, I very nearly gave up on this book at about 5% into it.
The writing (not so much the spelling, but the stream-of-consciousness, the noise of it and in it, in spite of realising almost immediately that this part was deliberate and actually served a purpose) was almost enough to drive me up the walls, and Todd, the main character, came off as rather unlikeable on top of that.
I'm glad I persisted. Oh yes, I'm glad. Once I got used to the noisiness of the writing (if the choice of word strikes you as odd, anyone who starts reading these books will get my meaning almost immediately), and got more into the story, it gradually developed into a rather interesting and reasonably original YA dystopia. There was plenty of predictability, in many ways, but also some twists I hadn't expected, and quite a bit of character development for Todd - even some for Viola, although she felt a lot more like just a prop for Todd's development. When reading the first book, I was hoping she'd get to be her own person in the sequels, and fortunately, that does indeed happen.
In spite of eventually liking The Knife of Never Letting Go, it took me months to actually pick up the next book - because it is hard work, reading this writing. On the other hand, once I picked up the second book, I could hardly stop - and read The Ask and the Answer, Monsters of Men and The New World right after one another.
The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men both ended up five star reads for me, and I don't hand out five stars lightly. In this case, too, I did it with some hesitation; I felt that as much as I loved these books, in several ways they were still far from perfect. Not just because of the language/style still bothered me to an extent (although I did eventually get used to it and felt it was a justified, clever choice by Ness); I don't even mean that so much of it was completely predictable - which, actually, was a good thing in this case, as it means the actions, the decisions, the choices, the things people did, it all came off realistic.
On the other hand, when I try to think of all those flaws to list here... I can't really come up with anything actually worth putting down. Both of these books were just... gripping. And desperate. And wonderful.
The New World, being a short story, was not quite as satisfying a read for me, but it did offer an intriguing glimpse into Viola's life before she landed on the planet.
Patrick Ness recently published a few additional short stories set in this world, but I haven't yet got around to reading them. I fully intend to, though.
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