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Chaos Walking

I am currently reading book 2 in a three part series called, "Chaos Walking." Its one of those dystopian type series that are all the rage right now. The first book in the series is called, "The Knife of Never Letting Go," and I read it pretty quickly which is silly for me to even write because I read everything quickly but this one I flew through. More so because it is a young adult novel and so easier to read rather than because it was so good I didn't want it to end which was not the case. It reminds me a lot of "The Hunger Games" series which was excellent but whereas "the Hunger Games" had amazing characters and completely engrossing, fast paced story telling, this series is slow moving, frustrating and disjointed. The characters are not developed at all and the story which has all the makings to be strong, just doesn't quite hit the mark. The premise of it is a good one: the main character, Todd a boy on the verge of becoming a man, is the last boy on a planet where only men exist or so it seems. All the women were supposedly killed in a war that happened years before with the native dwellers of this new world. As you can probably guess, women do exist somewhere on this planet - they are just kept separate for reasons that become clear later in the book.

The most interesting part of the series is that the surviving men can all hear each others thoughts, which they simply call, "noise." The idea for this according to the author, was born out of our society's obsession with technology and being able to access information about anyone and anything in a matter of seconds. This is exactly the reason why I thought I would love this series - I have long said that technology is the root of all evil and all individuality will die eventually from it so I love that someone agrees with me on this although I may exaggerate the effects slightly - just slightly. So although this idea completely intrigues me, I don't think the author actually succeeds in making it come to life in story form. Maybe after the third book, it will all come together and make sense but right now, I have no idea where he is going with it. So far, the story is centered on war and seems to be a commentary on slavery and power and corruption and not on hearing peoples, "noise." I'm confused by these books. The author seems to be going in too many different directions and making too many statements that its not coming together in a cohesive way. I'm also not really caring about any of the characters, except the dog, who is amazing. Its a pretty sad statement when a dog is my favorite character in a book about humans.

I'm committed to reading all three books even though they are not exciting me. I still believe that the premise is good enough to hang in for in hopes that the author will bring it all together in an intriguing, thoughtful way. Hoping...

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