Cillian fights off the Mayor's son, Davy Prentiss, and other men from the town while Ben gives Todd his own hunting knife and Todd's deceased mother's diary. The two men immediately force him to leave Prentisstown with just a satchel of supplies and Manchee to accompany him. Ben and Cillian suddenly reveal they have been planning Todd's escape from Prentisstown for his entire life. When Todd explains the silence to his adoptive parents, Ben and Cillian, his Noise accidentally projects the discovery to the entire town. The men of Prentisstown make up the last surviving settlement on New World – at least according to Mayor Prentiss, after whom the town is named.Īt the beginning of the book, Todd and his dog, Manchee, discover a lone patch of silence, described as a 'hole in the Noise', in a local swamp. As a side effect of the virus, the remaining men in Prentisstown can hear each others' (and animals') thoughts, described as an ever-present cascade of what they call Noise. The inhabitants of Prentisstown claim that every Spackle was wiped out during the war, and Todd has no reason to believe otherwise. The Spackle are New World's native inhabitants and are blamed for the release of a germ that caused the majority of deaths and was particularly fatal to women. Todd has been told that all the women and nearly all the men on New World were killed in a war with the Spackle that occurred around the time of his birth.

Todd is within days of his thirteenth birthday, the age in Prentisstown at which all boys become men. Todd Hewitt is the only boy left in Prentisstown, a small settlement on New World – an alien planet only recently colonized by humanity. According to The Guardian coverage of its award, 'He turned to children's fiction after he had the idea for a world where it is impossible to escape information overload, and knew it was right for teenagers.' Ī film adaptation of the novel, simply titled Chaos Walking, was released on 5 March 2021. The Knife was Ness's first work for teens and young adults. The novel was celebrated by critics and won annual awards including the Booktrust Teenage Prize, the Guardian Award, and the James Tiptree, Jr. The story follows Todd Hewitt, a 12-year-old boy who runs away from Prentisstown, a town where everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts, after learning of a secret about its past.

It is the first book in the Chaos Walking series, followed by The Ask and the Answer and Monsters of Men. The Knife of Never Letting Go is a young-adult science fiction novel written by British-American author Patrick Ness.

The knife of never letting go about