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#5 Platform: The Ask and the Answer
May. 2nd, 2012 12:23 amWhat's interesting is how you get the answer first.
Book #18: The Ask and the Answer
Author: Patrick Ness
Provenance: Borrowed from Westmount Library
Caution: Spoilers for the first book in this trilogy, The Knife of Never Letting Go.
When you read a first book that is a tense, thrilling rush across the surface of a new planet, and it culminates in the arrival in the place the two lead characters have been aiming for all along, only to find that it’s too late, and the town once known as Haven has already fallen to the enemy, well… first, you want to jump into the next book right away, although I made myself wait a bit, so I could let the first one settle a little. But second, you really have to wonder what the next book is going to look like. Now that the race is over, but everything’s different and nothing’s as safe as you’d expected, where do you go from there?
That’s the first challenge of the Ask and the Answer: setting out the new situation, now that Mayor Prentiss has taken over Haven, renamed it New Prentisstown, and proclaimed himself President. Now he’s got to take control of a town that surrendered just to avoid a bloodbath, as an authority figure that proclaims he wants to put the war behind them, and is trying to make the right moves for peace. But how far can you trust this when the first things he does are splitting up our leads from the previous book, Todd and Viola, and starts setting about with policies of segregation by sex and militaristic occupation that seems like it worked out so poorly in the old Prentisstown? Todd finds himself locked up and under guard at the start, and feels like he’s being watched wherever he goes, which also doesn’t strike one as a call for peace.
Viola, having been shot at the end of the first book, gets placed instead in a House of Healing, cared for by Mistress Coyle, a healer who used to be part of the town government, but remains the most skilled medical professional available. Viola gets patched up, gets to know the younger apprentices, amiable Maddy and stern Corinne, and starts to get a sense that maybe something is starting to move among the womenfolk... something that may stand to a challenge to the town's power base.
The story that follows, told in alternating chapters from Todd and Viola's points of view, is a hell of a take on asymmetrical warfare and strategy, with both sides being led by complex, driven characters. And that's Mayor-cum-President Prentiss and Mistress Coyle, mind. We get the story from the view of Todd and Viola, important lower level characters, so we can see the corroding effects of trying to use and hold power, squeezing it out, firsthand. And make no mistake, this can be a brutal book - it is not a happy place to be, the former Haven, but it is a very well thought out and real one, with strong points to be made. It's a trick, making all these characters sympathetic, but Ness manages it.
The writing is as sharp and feeling as the first book, with real senses for Todd and Viola, apart and longing, trying to work out a way back to each other, as well as the secondary characters. You get more of the presence of the Spackle, the indigenous species of the world, now taken as forced labor prisoners, and to see their plight, but also characters on both sides of the fight, characters that become more than sounding boards for our leads. So help me, this book made Davy Prentiss Jr. a well-rounded and somewhat sympathetic character. That would be the one who shot Viola at the end of book 1, the son of the mayor. That's some good character writing.
The plot is great, getting progressively tighter, screwing deeper and deeper in as it builds to another cracking-great set piece at the end, complete with... another cliff-hanger. Just so you know going in, it is there. I was going to jump right into the next one, but this is a pretty intense ride, and I couldn't just step in.
On the whole: great, great piece of work. I've read non-YA novels that didn't treat these themes of how to keep your humanity in the face of what's required of you in war, of how to keep your connections to people when you're apart, to trust them, of how far is too far to take a strategy, with nearly the complexity and power of this book. It actually managed to be better than the first book, and that's something. I eagerly await seeing what Monsters of Men is like; if it's anything like this one, it'll be a real doozy.
Next up: Losing Mum and Pup.
Book #18: The Ask and the Answer
Author: Patrick Ness
Provenance: Borrowed from Westmount Library
Caution: Spoilers for the first book in this trilogy, The Knife of Never Letting Go.
When you read a first book that is a tense, thrilling rush across the surface of a new planet, and it culminates in the arrival in the place the two lead characters have been aiming for all along, only to find that it’s too late, and the town once known as Haven has already fallen to the enemy, well… first, you want to jump into the next book right away, although I made myself wait a bit, so I could let the first one settle a little. But second, you really have to wonder what the next book is going to look like. Now that the race is over, but everything’s different and nothing’s as safe as you’d expected, where do you go from there?
That’s the first challenge of the Ask and the Answer: setting out the new situation, now that Mayor Prentiss has taken over Haven, renamed it New Prentisstown, and proclaimed himself President. Now he’s got to take control of a town that surrendered just to avoid a bloodbath, as an authority figure that proclaims he wants to put the war behind them, and is trying to make the right moves for peace. But how far can you trust this when the first things he does are splitting up our leads from the previous book, Todd and Viola, and starts setting about with policies of segregation by sex and militaristic occupation that seems like it worked out so poorly in the old Prentisstown? Todd finds himself locked up and under guard at the start, and feels like he’s being watched wherever he goes, which also doesn’t strike one as a call for peace.
Viola, having been shot at the end of the first book, gets placed instead in a House of Healing, cared for by Mistress Coyle, a healer who used to be part of the town government, but remains the most skilled medical professional available. Viola gets patched up, gets to know the younger apprentices, amiable Maddy and stern Corinne, and starts to get a sense that maybe something is starting to move among the womenfolk... something that may stand to a challenge to the town's power base.
The story that follows, told in alternating chapters from Todd and Viola's points of view, is a hell of a take on asymmetrical warfare and strategy, with both sides being led by complex, driven characters. And that's Mayor-cum-President Prentiss and Mistress Coyle, mind. We get the story from the view of Todd and Viola, important lower level characters, so we can see the corroding effects of trying to use and hold power, squeezing it out, firsthand. And make no mistake, this can be a brutal book - it is not a happy place to be, the former Haven, but it is a very well thought out and real one, with strong points to be made. It's a trick, making all these characters sympathetic, but Ness manages it.
The writing is as sharp and feeling as the first book, with real senses for Todd and Viola, apart and longing, trying to work out a way back to each other, as well as the secondary characters. You get more of the presence of the Spackle, the indigenous species of the world, now taken as forced labor prisoners, and to see their plight, but also characters on both sides of the fight, characters that become more than sounding boards for our leads. So help me, this book made Davy Prentiss Jr. a well-rounded and somewhat sympathetic character. That would be the one who shot Viola at the end of book 1, the son of the mayor. That's some good character writing.
The plot is great, getting progressively tighter, screwing deeper and deeper in as it builds to another cracking-great set piece at the end, complete with... another cliff-hanger. Just so you know going in, it is there. I was going to jump right into the next one, but this is a pretty intense ride, and I couldn't just step in.
On the whole: great, great piece of work. I've read non-YA novels that didn't treat these themes of how to keep your humanity in the face of what's required of you in war, of how to keep your connections to people when you're apart, to trust them, of how far is too far to take a strategy, with nearly the complexity and power of this book. It actually managed to be better than the first book, and that's something. I eagerly await seeing what Monsters of Men is like; if it's anything like this one, it'll be a real doozy.
Next up: Losing Mum and Pup.
