Ness falls victim to the final book curse and delivers a stinker. Monsters of Men was a considerable fall off in quality from the previous two books bNess falls victim to the final book curse and delivers a stinker. Monsters of Men was a considerable fall off in quality from the previous two books both in terms of plotting and execution. The first two books in the series were about big ideas...what is the nature of truth? What is it's relationship to information? Why is the truth so easily obscured? What happens to truth in the midst of a war? What is the relationship between access to the truth and freedom?
In this book we get very little of that. Instead it is mostly Todd and Viola yearning for each other with a little bit of Avatar mixed in. Oh well. 2 out of 3 ain't bad....more
It's rare for a sequel (2nd of 3 books) to actually be better than the original, but for the first 80% Ness actually pulls it off. More on that later.It's rare for a sequel (2nd of 3 books) to actually be better than the original, but for the first 80% Ness actually pulls it off. More on that later.
The story continues with New World at the cusp of civil war. Ness does a remarkable job of portraying the brutal logic pursued by each side of the conflict, each convinced of the rightness of their cause and the depravity of their enemies. It's gut-wrenching to see Todd, manipulated and deceived though he may be, give up on Viola and even participate in war crimes against the Spackle and towns people, especially the women.
But Viola and her mates in the Answer are hardly blameless, terrorizing the town and its populace and its citizens with random bombings knowing that "the president" will react with evermore brutality. The Answer says it wants to save the New World, but its ruthless practices force the reader to ask, for what, a new tyrant?
I lived in El Salvador in the early 1990s and this book very neatly captured the dilemma faced by most Salvadorans. Caught in a conflict few of them wanted or understood, just wanting to live peacefully, but forced by outside players to make terrible choices.
Spoilers below (view spoiler)[ Now, about that last 20% of the book. Ness, in his eagerness to give us an exciting book, engineers a plot a "final battle" where the President and Madam Coyle are set to fight out to the death. Viola makes a last ditch attempt to save Todd and together they subdue the President with Todd suddenly finding the power to channel his noise as a weapon. But guess who shows up? That's right, the long awaited settlers, or at least a scout ship with enough fire power to swing the battle should they decide to join the fight. Viola must rush off to keep them out of the clutches of Madam Coyle. Wait, there's more... The Spackle now arrive on the scene with an army large enough to wipe out the entire colony of humans if the humans don't get their act together soon. Sorry, but that isn't really treating your reader with respect. (hide spoiler)] ...more
Like most good speculative fiction, The Knife of Never Letting Go, conducts a thought experiment asking what would life be like if... In New World, thLike most good speculative fiction, The Knife of Never Letting Go, conducts a thought experiment asking what would life be like if... In New World, the thoughts of males are out in the open, unhidden from the rest of the world, in the form of "noise." Every stray thought, trivial, puerile, profound, and profain is out there for all the world to hear and interpret and men's minds being what they are, it's not pretty. How would people adapt? Would our understanding of each other grow? Who would thrive in such a society and who struggles?
Ness seems to be thinking about our post-modern, social media obsessed, blogging, reveal all world in some ways when he concludes that too much information (noise)sets the table for deception, confusion and chaos when there is no way to know which thoughts are true, which are obfuscation and which are wishful thinking. The "truth" may be there somewhere, but, it is impossible to know with any certainty what it is and because no self-filtering is possible, no one could ever be considered reliable. The question is, how far away from New World is our World?
An extra star for the audio version for the fantastic narration. ...more
The plot and treatment seem to have been cribbed from of "World War Z" by Max Brooks and doesn't have much new to offer in the way of exploring the moThe plot and treatment seem to have been cribbed from of "World War Z" by Max Brooks and doesn't have much new to offer in the way of exploring the moral and ethical complexities that are sure to arise as machines grow in capacity. For that you could do worse than watching reruns of Battlestar Galactica or picking up a copy of "I, Robot."...more
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