The Ask and the Answer

In The Knife of Never Letting Go (rev. 11/08), set on an alien world where the native "Noise" germ makes thoughts audible (except those of women, who are immune), Todd escaped from the brutal all-male village of Prentisstown with Viola, the orphaned daughter of scouts sent ahead from a settler ship. But when they reached their destination, the peaceful city of Haven, they found that their enemies had beaten them there. While Todd is imprisoned and put to work by Mayor Prentiss, a master manipulator who's secured a cure for Noise and, with it, Haven, Viola is placed in an all-female house of healing, the head of which forms a resistance group called the Answer and starts blowing up strategic targets. Now-President Prentiss forms the Ask in response, and the conflict escalates. Ness takes his characters to new, dark places—particularly Todd, who, believing Viola first a hostage and then a traitor, colludes with Prentiss, helping him brand first the Spackle (the enslaved indigenous population) and then the women of the settlement in horrifying scenes that test the boundaries of young adult literature. For Todd to be remotely sympathetic by book's end is truly an achievement, and the struggle to reconcile his supposed innocence despite the "blood on his hands" with his unforgivable actions will provoke as much thought as the depictions of slavery, genocide, terrorism, and torture. After so much incident, Todd essentially ends where he began, and, faced with a new peril (and a new cliffhanger) at the climax, he makes a decision that will have most readers groaning in frustration. Still, the series continues to develop a fascinating world, and its fully formed characters and conflicts draw attention to difficult issues with a rare, unblinking candor. CLAIRE E. GROSS