Fiction for Teens

The Ask and the Answer follows straight on from The Knife of Never Letting Go, the first book in the trilogy. Todd and Viola have just arrived at Haven to find that the Mayor of Prentisstown has taken over and given himself the title of President Prentiss. Todd is made to work for the enemy, the President, but when bombs begin to explode around the city, he is forced to choose sides…

As I said in my review of The Knife of Never Letting Go, the characters are really interesting and as the story went on they really changed, especially that of Davy Prentiss Jr., the President’s son. In the first book, he came across as a cruel and heartless character, However, he shows a different side in this book. Todd and Viola go through some very tough times in this book as it deals with issues such as war, genocide and terrorism. This makes it a much darker novel than the first, and very gripping, too.

Because Todd and Viola spend much of the book separated, the story is told from both their points of view. Overall, I preferred Todd’s style of expressing his point of view to that of Viola’s. Like the first book, the end of The Ask and the Answer makes me want to read the conclusion to the Chaos Walking trilogy, Monsters of Men. 

My next review will be Chasing the Stars, the latest Malorie Blackman book.