BLADE: playing dead

by Tim Bowler

It's been a long time since I've read a book with such unrelenting tension and suspense. Not even one sentence of comic relief interrupts the sense of fear and darkness that envelops the life of fourteen-year-old Blade, a street kid in urban Britain. Blade is a person with a past--a violent and painful past. But he managed to escape the life he had been living, and for the past three years, he's been playing dead, hiding from every personal contact and even from himself. Blade is a master at sensing trouble; he has honed his powers of observation to a fine point. But one day he slips, is brutalized by girl gang members, and his life starts unraveling. Ghosts from his bloody past come to track him down. He makes the mistake of starting to care for a girl and a small child. He has lost control, and never has he been in greater danger. Told with Blade's voice to an unseen observer, Bigeyes, in British street slang and Bowler's own language, this story grips the reader from page one and doesn't let go even at the last sentence. The word is that Blade is book one in an eight-book series. That is a good thing, because at the end of book one, Blade has no where to go but up. ~reviewed by Dail Sams

THE KNIFE

OF NEVER

LETTING GO

By patrick ness

Sometimes the Noise in Prentisstown on New World is overwhelming, though most every man has learned to deal with it somehow. There's little privacy because everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts--their Noise. Prentisstown has only men in it. All the women died long ago. And Todd Hewitt is the youngest of the children in town. In one month he will turn 13 and become the last boy to reach manhood. Until then, he's lonely. He does have his dog Manchee to talk to, though dogs don't have much to say back. But one day, down in the swamp, Todd hears a hole in the Noise, a silence that is deafening, and he finds a girl, a terrified girl, hiding from Aaron, the preacher man in town. Todd has long suspected Aaron is crazy, and when he hears Aaron's noise about the quiet, he knows for sure.

Ben and Cillian, Todd's guardians tell Todd to run. They know the town's secrets, the secrets that every boy learns when he becomes a man. They know Todd Hewitt must escape, even if he doesn't understand why. So he and Manchee run, and the silent girl runs with them. They are relentlessly pursued by Aaron, and then by the army formed of all the men in the town. They head for the legendary town of Haven, the first settlement on New World, and the largest city. Over and over they are caught and hurt and endangered, and over and over they escape to run on again, never completely understanding why, but knowing they are being followed by evil... The Knife of Never Letting Go is painful to read but impossible to put down.

~reviewed by Dail Sams