I raced through this whole series, gobbling it up like I was starved for it. I really think it has a lot in common with [b:The Hunger Games|2767052|The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)|Suzanne Collins|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1293504845s/2767052.jpg|2792775]. Here we go:

1. Both deal with the gray area between good and evil. Though the kids are clearly fighting against an evil leader, in both cases the opposition uses questionable tactics themselves.

2. Both have breakneck plotting full of danger and suspense, but not in a way that sacrifices good writing and character development.

3. Both have a love triangle, those it's way more important to Hunger Games than it is to Chaos Walking.

4. They both make these strong arguments about problems in society through an exaggerated reality. In Hunger Games, I'd say one main idea is that you can distract people from the suffering of others with a lot of sensational entertainment (bread and circuses), even when the suffering is the entertainment. In Chaos Walking, what stuck out for me was the idea of mob mentality. There is literal mind control in the book, but it also speaks to the kind of power any charismatic, power-hungry leader can have. In both series, our heroes can see these huge societal problems (and try to fix them) in a way the adults can't (or won't).

5. They both made me cry pretty hard.

So I definitely recommend this series for Hunger Games fans out there. I also recommend it on its own merits, of course. But I will say that I read through all three books so fast, I never stopped to criticize. I just devoured. ( )

Finally read book 3 of this trilogy after having to take a break, given the unremitting one-note grimness of book 2. Unfortunately, that is perpetuated here even more intensely.

Picking up immediately from the end of book 2, where an army of indigenous native humanoids approaches the city to take revenge for the attrocities committed by the human colonists, the story begins where Todd reluctantly releases the captured self-styled President (whom he and Viola persist in terming the 'Mayor' from his old role in Todd's home town), as he is the only one whom the army will follow. From there, military conflict ensues, with both sides facing terrible losses, their people cut down, burned, blown up or shot. Repeatedly.

The scout ship from the approaching convoy of new colonists had landed at the end of book 2, and Bradley and Simone, two of the people whom Viola grew up with, try to calm things, especially Bradley who wants to broker a peace with the Spackle, as the humans call them, but Viola messes up that opportunity when she launches a missile to save Todd - not even necessary as events transpire. This commits the colonists to the war when they could have stayed neutral and been able to broker a peace. It also continues the theme from the earlier books: Todd and Viola will do anything to save the other, even if it means committing attrocities against countless others. In book 2, Todd mistreated Spackle captives and even branded both them and the women of the settlement with bands which, it transpires, are now slowly killing the women - the only survivor from the Spackle so treated, 1017, is also suffering the effects, though less rapidly than humans such as Viola. Todd is constantly feted as the boy who will not kill, and goes out of his way to avoid doing so in this book, despite or perhaps because he killed a harmless Spackle fisherman in the first book out of xenophobic fear, but the lack of acknowledgement of his previous action appears somewhat hypocritical - it didn't count because it was 'only' a native.

As the story proceeds, the creepy Mayor starts to behave more decently towards Todd, whom earlier he had tortured or had his men beat up. It is obvious however that he is influencing him, as Todd begins to control his Noise like the Mayor does, Noise being the name the humans give to the telepathic transmission of thoughts and feelings which affects all human males due to an indigenous virus. Todd even starts to control others, also as the Mayor does, if only to make them fetch more feed and water for his horse, then feels slightly guilty but goes on doing it anyway. Rather as he felt guilty for mistreating the Spackle and the women in book 2, but justified it on the grounds that he was being less nasty to them than other followers of the Mayor.

A key feature of the present book is the constant Point of View switches between characters. With book 2, it was between Viola and Todd, but at least it usually stuck to one of them for a chapter. Here it is every scene and becomes pretty exhausting, even if reading the paperback which uses different fonts for the characters as well as the scene heading names. Now we have the additional viewpoint of Spackle 1017 - or the Return as the rest of his race call him. Their own collective name is the Land, and we learn that they have a gestalt mind which encompasses their whole people. The only one of them who is partly separate from that is an individual who is nominated to act for the greater good of all when a decision needs to be made quickly - the Sky. The Return is eaten up with hatred for the humans and the desire for revenge, especially against Todd whom he calls the Knife, and the Sky tries to bring him round to the realisation that they must make peace with the humans who are about to be reinforced with another 5,000 colonists armed with missiles and bombs similar to those aboard the scout ship.

The problem I found with this book was the relentless description of war on the one hand, and the unquestioning stupidity of Todd on the other, in going along with the Mayor and not realising he was being manipulated. The Mayor starts to talk of Todd being like a son to him - this is the psychopath who shot his own son in book 2 for no reason at all! And Viola is equally stupid in her total rejection of Mistress Coyle's viewpoint, when she refuses to accept that the Mayor has engineered the banding of the women to kill them. I found it very difficult to believe that most of the adults think Todd and Viola are demi-gods, sending Viola to broker peace and even, in the case of Mistress Coyle, stepping down in favour of her as leader. Todd and Viola are rather selfish people wrapped up in their own concerns for which the rest of the world can go hang, certainly not leaders who can be entrusted with the welfare of thousands of people.

The most realistic character in the story is probably Mistress Coyle, but she starts to take a back seat compared to book 2 and has a really shabby writeout. It also crystalised for me what I found wrong with her character in the earlier book: can someone whose whole life is dedicated to healing really square that with being a terrorist? After all, she is meant to be an ordinary person as opposed to a pantomine villain such as the Mayor. She is right about him, but everyone sees that too late and they have seemingly forgotten her in the short interval.

We again have a repeat of the theme of animals sacrificing themselves for human survival, but it was so telegraphed and such an anticlimax after Manchee in the first book, that it was really a case of 'so what'.

Given all these issues, this volume drops down to a 2-star rating for me. It began as a page turner but developed about half way into an endurance exercise to finish, just to find out what happened. And the ending is a massive cop-out in my opinion. ( )

I still loved the first book the most. There were times I felt the characters were a little to unaware of what was really going on. I don't like when characters miss the obvious for plot reasons. I still loved this series. I would recommend it highly. ( )

A great YA trilogy - worth reading. ( )

NOTE: This review applies to the entire Chaos Walking trilogy.

A young-adult trilogy set on a planet New World, where settlers from Old World (presumably Earth) headed looking for a new start. The initial landing went badly, resulting in a native species of intelligent beings being subdued as slaves, all the men being infected with a virus that makes every inner thought audible to everyone (known as Noise), and all the women dead in one of the original settlements, Prentisstown.

Out of Prentisstown comes Todd, a young teen who is forced to flee when the mayor, who is plotting a war to take over the planet, turns against him. He soon meets up with young Viola, a girl who crash-landed with a scout ship from an incoming group of new settlers. Todd and Viola travel across the planet to try to warn the incoming settlers before Mayor Prentiss can start his war. Along the way, they encounter other settlers from other towns, including a renowned woman healer who sets herself up as the leader of an armed resistance to now-President Prentiss.

I thought this trilogy (plus the very slight short story that showcases Viola's life on the scout ship just before it lands) was really well done. The writing is certainly on a young-adult level (sensible since all three novels are narrated in turns by Todd and Viola), but the themes that it tackles are far from simplistic: What is war? Is it ever OK to kill someone? Do the ends ever justify the means? Is it possible to do the wrong thing for the right reasons? Is redemption ever really possible? Time and again I braced myself for a pat answer, and time and again I was pleasantly surprised. Ness takes pains to present the good and bad sides of both heroes and villains, to the point where readers will find themselves questioning which is which.

Partway through the series, I expressed the opinion that this is a better YA trilogy than The Hunger Games. After finishing the third book, I stand by that opinion. While I enjoyed both series quite a bit, I think Ness does a better job of presenting and exploring the larger themes that lie behind the narrative. ( )