there are times when he makes unfortunate decisions, but they always seem consistent in terms of his character, and the background from which he is coming. it is easy to pick apart books that are 'good' or 'okay' or 'the worst', but the ones that i fall into - the ones that i hate having to put down for anything as mundane as sleep or work, those are incredibly difficult to put into words. it is so hard to talk about books that do this to me. this world - these characters - it consumed me.

It has been awhile since i have been immersed in a book. ness touches upon the problems of colonization and group mentality and dehumanization and helplessness and loyalty with a skill for storytelling and characterization, and always skirting that fine line between emotion and sentimentality. This was much richer and deeper and so very dark. I really thought it was going to be a low-impact tale of a boy's adventure's through a damaged land with some sort of eventual self-discovery and that it would have good action sequences and some obvious metaphors and blah-di-blah and people said it was sad, so i figured someone would die at some point. i don't even know where to start with this book. i myself had all three of the books in this trilogy just smooshed in the middle of piles of other books at my place, thinking, 'i will read those when i get around to it.' and you may be feeling the same way. there are a lot of books in the world, most of us are mortal, who has the time, etc.

To the other 171 of you, i say - 'WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?' and you can see i am serious about this, because i have done math in order to convince you.**Īnd i know, i know. 199 of them have this book on their shelves.

Patrick ness the knife of letting go