Two Sides

“We are the choices that we make.” Truth.
 

22.12 The Ask and The Answer

***Spoiler alert!***  I will not spoil this book, but if you have not read the first book there are spoilers ahead!

Book two in the Chaos Walking trilogy starts literally at the end of the previous book.  Its first words are, “The End.”  That book was an adventure story but this is a war story and it is much more violent!  So much so, that my previous delight at having found a book worthy of recommending to young males has fizzled.  In fact, I felt very uncomfortable reading much of this book.  It remind me of the recent trend in movie ratings; when movies like The King’s Speech are rated R for repeating the F-word six times, and a movie like Hanna, where literally everyone dies, is rated PG-13.  What is wrong with us?

Anyway, back to the story… There are two sides to every story, and in this book we are told the story through two points of view.  We hear Todd’s side and we hear Violet’s side.  I thought the shifts were handled well but I found myself missing Todd as his story is now the secondary one.   There are two sides fighting in a war, The Ask and The Answer.  Both sides think they are right and both sides are wrong.  So, while violent, there are some truths conveyed about war and fighting that are important to tell.  Nothing is simple and nothing can be planned out entirely.

Writing wise, Todd’s singular dialect is getting on my nerves. I believe it is supposed to portray his lack of education, and the misspelling are fine when he speaks but I hate it being used in his thoughts. It doesn’t really make sense, they are mostly tion words, i.e.: direkshuns for directions or injeckshuns or injections (and cuz which drives me crazy!), but he uses many other words that are far more advanced.  Even though his thoughts play a different role specific to the plot of the book, since they are sometimes heard, the odd spellings take you totally out of the story.  I wish the author would only use the phonetic misspellings in conversation.

The ending of the book was a complete shock to me, and I look forward to reading the third book and finishing the story, I just wish I was as excited about the second book as I was about the first.