10 - The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness

This book starts on an interesting note and never lets the fact that it’s aimed at young adults drive it away from experimentation or interesting writing. While the font stuff is occasionally irritating, it never really gets in the way, and there are some moments of stunning book design that it affords. This carries you quickly through the first two thirds or three quarters of the book. Eventually, however, the limitations of the very narrow first person viewpoint of a fifteen year-old boy start to become a drag on the book. Getting first person present singular right is a delicate balancing act as regards revealing and concealing information, and it seems to me that in the interest of getting to heart of his character’s confusion, the author allows the narrative to blindside the narrator far too often, so that the ending is very much like getting beaten over the head in a lot of places. That isn’t to say that the ending is bad, just that it doesn’t match the early sections of the book. It also spends a little too much time doing Disaster Porn.