You've probably seen the trailer for Chaos Walking. In fact, you might've seen it already.
But I have become obsessed with the book series as of late, and I decided to make a review of it. It's a dystopian trilogy (there's something fitting about three books, isn't there?) and it's the story of Todd Hewitt, a boy that's about to become a man.
The first few lines (and some of my favorite lines) are these:
"The first thing you find out when yer dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say.
About anything.
'Need a poo, Todd.'
'Shut up, Manchee.'
'Poo. Poo, Todd.'
'I said shut it.'"
While Todd may seem hard to his dog on the outside, don't worry, they're friends :) And you'll get way too attached to Manchee, becau--oh, oops, spoilers, right, ahem.
Anyway, you find out that Todd and his talking doggo live on a planet (that is not Earth, but I'm sure you guessed that by me saying "planet" *shrug*) with another type of alien. Years ago, there was a war where something (A chemical? Gas? Something?? I can't remember what) was released. This killed all the women along with half of the men.
And if that wasn't bad enough, this (chemical or whatever) made all. Men's. Thoughts. Visible.
It's called the Noise.
All men (and animals) can be heard through thoughts and read through this sort of visible cloud of--noise--around their heads.
It's always constant, and there is literally no quiet in Todd's world. Pubs use music to drown out the Noise and to let the men keep their thoughts, because you can read them like a book.
And since all of the women are gone, the town our young Todd Hewitt lives in is dying.
And soon? Soon Todd will become a man--and then he'll be the last man.
The last man in Prentisstown.
But while Todd is out with Manchee one day, he discovers something more interesting than the fact that he'll be a man soon.
A hole in the Noise.
A place of quiet.
A place without thoughts.
And in the hole, a girl.
Content:
UGH okay here goes, I'm going to try to give a spoiler-free--
There is definitely the use of some rough language in these books. Todd, despite being, like, twelve (no I'm not kidding he turns thirteen in the books) swears--which I guess is not uncommon since he's living in a dystopian world where there are no mothers to scold him for it. A lot of uses of "'eff" and "He--" as well as some "F---" "Da--" and "G------n". Other insults or things might be used. It's often enough to be in casual dialogue.
There is also gore. Full-blown wars in this book series--lot of violence and injuries. One character may or may not get half his face eaten off by an alligator--some characters taunt other characters to kill them--there are descriptions of characters being killed as well.
No kissing or anything past that, but it is in a society where women are dead, so men are often pining about them in very unmodest ways.
There's a degree of sexism to the whole plot--and you discover why in the first book--but the main characters obviously don't agree with it.
Oh--there's also a crazy preacher that's just a bit off his rocker and misusing the Bible. Not my favorite person, admittedly.
As far as the movie goes--I started watching it, and I saw why the movie was getting low ratings. While the acting was probably better than it deserved, the movie seemed to be in a constant rush and... weirdly cut. The first book is literally about the characters running through the forest, but they take time to stop and you get the sense that time has passed. I understand that they have a minimal time to get through, but the film seemed too rushed and when it took time to stop, the story seemed to start over, not build. I would say 13 and up for both book and movie. All that being said, the scenery was beautiful.
~Happy Reading,
TheBookGobbler
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