The Ask and the Answer

Author: Patrick Ness

Publisher: Walker Books

Publication Year: 2009

Most of the readers will be: Late middle school and early high school boys and girls.

Reader's advisory: For another trilogy that challenges the way we think about the world try Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials.

Summary: (Caution! Spoilers for The Knife of Never Letting Go)
Todd and Viola have made it to Haven hoping it is the one place on New World where they will be safe only to discover that the citizens of Haven have already surrendered to Mayor (now President) Prentiss. Immediately the two are separated and for a while, Todd doesn't even know if Viola has survived the bullet she took as they entered town.
Todd is locked up in the top of a church tower with the old mayor of Haven (now called New Prentisstown). Every day he has to work with Davy Prentiss doing things that make his skin crawl. He watches as President Prentiss bends the men of New World to his will and turns the women into the enemy.
Viola is cured in a house of healing and ends up with a group called The Answer. The Answer intend to stop President Prentiss by any means necessary. Even force. Even if that force leads to civilian casualties.
Will Todd and Viola be reunited? Together could they have the strength to save New World from two violent dictators?

My favorite passage:

He gets to his feet.
He stands up tall-
And I shout his name again-
"TODD!"
Because it does something-
It does something to him-
It does something for him-
The Mayor's wrong-
He's wrong for ever and ever-
It's not that you should never love something so much it can control you.
It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.
It's not a weakness-
It's your best strength-
"TODD!" I shout again-
And he looks at me-
And I hear my name in his Noise-
And I know it-
I know it in my heart-
Right now-
Todd Hewitt-
There's nothing we can't do together-
And we're gonna win-
(pg 494)

What I really think:
Often when you have a series of novels the first one seems to be the best, and I think this is because the first book is when you learn all about the world where the story takes place. It is difficult for subsequent books to fill you with the same wonder you feel when you read the first because there aren't any more big surprises.
In The Knife of Never Letting Go, we learn a whole lot about New World. We learn what Todd has been told, and then we start to learn what is really going on. In The Ask and the Answer, Ness skillfully keeps us guessing whether we can believe everything we have read so far and even introduces some brand new twists.
He also introduces Viola as a narrator. She has a strong voice and her experiences provide a nice contrast with Todd's experiences. It is interesting to see how each of them handle being apart.
I will admit that I wasn't as engaged in some of the middle parts of this story as I was when reading The Knife of Never Letting Go, I think because I really like the interaction between Todd and Viola and they just aren't together throughout most of this book. However, the ending makes up for everything.

The Knife of Never Letting Go

Author: Patrick Ness

Publisher: Walker Books

Publication Year: 2008

Most of the readers will be: Late middle school and early high school boys and girls.

Reader's advisory: Try Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles for short stories that take place on a recently colonized Mars.

Summary:
Todd Hewitt has grown up in Prentisstown, the only surviving colony on New World. During a war with the local aliens, called Spackle, the aliens infected the animals with a germ that made them all start talking, and infected the humans with a germ that made all their thoughts heard. The Noise germ drove people crazy. It killed half the men and all the women.
In Prentisstown, a boy becomes a man at thirteen. Todd is the last boy in Prentisstown and he is one month away from his thirteenth birthday. His parents both died from the Noise germ and he lives with friends of theirs, Ben and Cillian.
When he and his dog Manchee go into the swamp one morning to gather apples Todd comes across something he has never experienced before. Quiet. There is a quiet spot in the swamp and it isn't natural. Todd tries to keep the quiet out of his Noise as he walks back through town, but somehow it escapes.
Now Todd is running. Because he and that quiet both mean something to Prentisstown, and the men don't want either of them to get away.

My favorite passage:

The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say.
About anything.
"Need a poo, Todd."
"Shut up, Manchee."
"Poo. Poo, Todd."
"I said shut it."
We're walking across the wild fields south-east of town, those ones that slope down to the river and head on towards the swamp. Ben's sent me to pick him some swamp apples and he's made me take Manchee with me, even tho we all know Cillian only bought him to stay on Mayor Prentiss's good side and so suddenly here's this brand new dog as a present for my birthday last year when I never said I wanted any dog, that what I said I wanted was for Cillian to finally fix the fissionbike so I wouldn't have to walk every forsaken place in this stupid town, but oh, no, happy birthday, Todd, here's a brand new puppy, Todd, and even tho you don't want him, even tho you never asked for him, guess who has to feed him and train him and wash him and take him for walks and listen to him jabber now that he's got old enough for the talking germ to set his mouth moving? Guess who?
"Poo," Manchee barks quietly to himself. "Poo, poo, poo."
"Just have yer stupid poo and quit yapping about it." (pg 3-4)

What I really think:
I'm kind of obsessed with this book. I'm kind of upset that the next Chaos Walking book isn't coming out until May. I don't want to say too much about it and I couldn't really share a passage except from the very beginning because it's full of questions and finding out the answers is part of the fun. I wish I could say you have all the answers by the end. But you don't. I suppose that's why book two is called The Ask and the Answer.
What can I tell you? This novel experiments with how different people, and different groups of people, handle situations they never imagined they would be in. How Right and Wrong get all mixed up and you can still do what's Right when everyone else is doing Wrong, but it is easy to see how so many people get involved in doing Wrong.
At one point, a character says that Noise is just information and too much information is a bad thing. I would never call this novel an allegory for our "information age," but it is not unlikely that Ness is making a passing comment on our current overabundance of information. Just remember that the cure for too much information is a good librarian to help you sort through it. ;)