Many young readers addicted to science fiction novels, such as myself, have gotten hooked on the trilogy Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness. The first addition in this series, The Knife of Never Letting Go, was published in 2008, and since has caught the attention of thousands teens and adults alike.  The series takes you on a journey many years in the future on a different planet with the main character’s Todd, Viola, and eventually a spackle known as The Return as they flee from enemies, try to find safe homes, and eventually all get caught up in the same world war. But the setting for this war isn’t normal- They are on another planet in which Spackle, not humans, are the primary intelligent species, and each man and animals every thought is broadcasted for anyone within earshot to hear in a gigantic mess known as noise.  Open up any of the three books, and you’ll see that the format is almost as confusing as the world these characters have to live in. It’s quite hard to explain what a page looks like- There may be random switches in point of view signified by different fonts, disorderly dialogue, or broken, incomplete fragments throughout the page. In other words, chaotic. But is all this to just confuse the reader? It may seem like it at first, but a closer look proves not.

First let’s look at the changes in perspective. In the first novel in the series,  The Knife of Never Letting Go, this isn’t an aspect of the book; it is Todd’s point of view for the entire thing. The reason is that all the main characters are pretty much together at all times. But in The Ask and the Answer, the point of view switches from Todd and Viola. Why? Because Todd and Viola are apart from each other for the majority of the book (Todd in the army of the Ask, Viola in the army of the Answer.) What you might notice that in these perspective switches, there are many things that are different. Of course the feeling of the two characters vary, but the font and how the world is portrayed differs too. When you are experiencing the book through Todd’s eyes, words are misspelled and the focus is quite poor to signify Todd’s un-education and raising. In Viola’s point of view, you experience the world more in focus, and most of the spelling and grammar is correct. In the final book, yet another perspective change is introduced when you see through the eyes of The Return, also known as Spackle 1017. In this things are viewed quite different, and it’s pretty hard to understand, because the species of the Spackle is so different from us humans.

The format of the book isn’t close to normal either. Many times a sentence is cut off in the middle, and specific words are italicized, bolded, or enlarged in an attempt to follow the character’s chaotic train of thought. Sometimes a bolded word will cut through the main characters thinking, signifying someone elses noise interrupting. Others there are words in parenthesis, which I interpreted as either the characters subconscious or something that he or she is trying to hide. And yet another aspect is that sometimes in the parentheses the character seems to be talking to you. Now, this might all seem confusing and pointless, but the series name is Chaos Walking, isn’t it? The characters live in a terribly confusing world where a man’s every thought is broadcasted to one another. I believe that Ness’s writing style throughout the series was chosen to help us get a better feel for the character’s lives.

~Brenna Reach