It’s been 24 days since I finished a book. I’ve started a bunch, but real life sort of intruded on me making a whole lot of progress. However, there’s nothing quite like a deadline to spur focus. I checked this out from the Seattle Public Library; it’s due back Saturday. I can’t renew it either, because someone else has requested the book. Well, it looks like that person got their book another way and I am no longer locked out of renewing it. Except I’ve already finished, so it doesn’t matter. With personal things quieting down a little bit, I devoted my reading time to finishing this particular book.
The Ask and the Answer is Patrick Ness’ sequel to The Knife of Never Letting Go, the James Tiptree Jr. Award winning first book of the Chaos Walking trilogy. I don’t normally throw out sentences like that to remind people of a book’s heritage. But in this case I am because both the first book and the second book are awesome and I want to point people at them as much as possible.
Did I say in my previous entry how awesome a title The Knife of Never Letting Go is? I’m betting we’ll see a spate of knife and blade related titles. The Ask and the Answer isn’t quite as great a title, but it’s still pretty memorable. The third book will be called Monsters of Men. Decent, but banal compared to Knife.
Titles aside, The Ask and the Answer returns the great characters from the first book, a little less provocative of a social critique, and a hugely improved plot structure. Todd and Viola return with more adolescent questions about their relationship to each other. Not of the does she like me?
variety, but of the will she be there for me?
variety. The bad guy is gleefully bad, and the all the powers that be are wonderfully Machiavellian. Now that the novelty of men being unable to hide their thoughts has worn off, the social questions aren’t quite so stark. Our bad guy, Mayor Prentiss, becomes a more clearly defined leader of a Taliban-like group that oppresses women. Nevertheless, woman are significantly important in opposition within the story.
I liked the story even better than the first book for one reason though. The Knife of Never Letting Go follows a quest structure. Todd and Viola traipse across New World searching for Haven, a city where they will be saved. Along the way they encounter episodic obstacles. The plot is very linear. The Ask and the Answer has multiple threads of action: two primary ones for Todd and Viola, and lots of secondary subplots for characters without points of view directly expressed in the story. Todd and Viola separate and come together, their goals sometimes converging but not always knowingly touching. The secondary characters are not left out either, both in a character development sense as well as plot sense. The son of the bad guy Mayor has his own character arc. So does one of the alien Spackle, and multiple healers, and even bit characters. Not as thoroughly told, but definitely present. In the first book, only Todd and Viola were ongoing. Most characters appeared and then dropped out at the end of their episode. The continuing characters were less people than relentless forces of nature. I loved the improvement this time around and it made the book near perfect for me.
Okay, from now on expect possible spoilers. You have been warned.
First, post-spoiler warning, why was the book near perfect instead of perfect? Well, everything just happens a little too patly and sometimes for no discernable reason. Why exactly does Mayor now President Prentiss make such a big deal out of Todd Hewitt? Never explained. The question is asked, but never answered. Why does the previous mayor get locked up with Todd in the tower at the beginning of the story? And how, at the end, do three armies end up converging on New Prentisstown at the exact same moment a scout ship from space investigates the city at the exact same moment that Todd and President Prentiss have their confrontation? Not to mention that Mistress Coyle and President Prentiss are just a little to predictably Machiavellian. Neither of them ever really make any mistakes with respect to each other. The two do a little plot dance around each other that anyone can see, not just smart people.
The theme throughout the first book was women’s roles. That’s still around, but the big exploration here is something else: Stockholm Syndrome. That’s the psychological state where a prisoner comes to identify with his captor. President Prentiss makes a huge effort out of getting Todd to convert to his side. He alternates between punitive and positive measures. The punitive ones aren’t designed to directly move Todd. Instead they work to make the positive measures more effective. Of course, being fiction, the measures can be effective as the authors wants them to be. In real life I don’t know how well they would work. And to a lesser extent, Mistress Coyle works her similar magic on Viola.
On a smaller note, there appeared to be a budding love triangle going on in the story. It played a role in the plot, but Ness did not go the sit-com route of having people turn against each other and against their respective groups because of it. I thought it was handled nicely.
For the upcoming third book, Monsters of Men, Ness appears to be foreshadowing all out war between alien humans and the native Spackle. Given his deft handling already, I am looking forward to reading my first interesting set of aliens in a while. The tidbits so far have been great. They are not unstoppable Heinlein style bugs. I’m betting they will have a range of personalities. 1017, the main Spackle featured in this book, was more than willing to accept the hospitality of who he viewed as his main tormentor, and still he retained his hatred. Plus, I love that the main way he communicated with his human captors was without language. Just sending telepathic images of what he wanted to happen to them. Just awesome.
On a more personal note, there’s one secondary character that dies. It’s a short scene. Very short, actually. I’m a little more emotionally sensitive at the moment than I normally would be (ask me if you want an explanation), so take this with a grain of salt. The scene got my experience of death very very right. It got me crying in remembrance while reading yesterday.
Well, ’nuff said for now. Read the books.
Some other blogged reviews:
- Persnickety Snark
- Save Ophelia
- Presenting Lenore
- Sam Ruddock and Vulpes Libris
- Rhapsody in Books
- Things Mean a Lot
Title: The Ask and the Answer
Author: Patrick Ness
Series: Chaos Walking; 2
Imprint / publisher: Candlewick Press
Format: Hardcover
Length: 519 p.
Publication date: 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0-7636-4490-1
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