Review: Chaos Walking Trilogy

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I just finished gobbling up the Chaos Walking trilogy, written by Patrick Ness.  I really loved it and thought I’d share with you the reasons why.

chaos walking

Book One: The Knife of Never Letting Go

The first book was a wild ride as I tried to situate myself on New World, the planet now inhabited by human settlers, a planet where men’s thoughts (their “Noise”) is audible.  Our protagonist is Todd Hewitt, on the verge of manhood and about to discover the dark secrets of his small town’s past, as he desperately attempts to out-run an army.

Huge, unapologetic cliffhanger.

Book Two: The Ask and the Answer

Book two, though, is when it gets really, really good.  War erupts.  As this is a spoiler-free review, all I will say is that it ends with another huge, unapologetic cliffhanger.

Book Three: Monsters of Men

Again, I don’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say that the war being fought in book two adds in another side.  Three-way war?  Heck yes.

Things I Loved:

* The books were incredibly thought-provoking.  I felt like they accurately showed just how much gray area there is no matter how desperately we want things to be black and white.  I love books that make me think.

* Understated love triangle.  The romance elements not only took a backseat in this series, they took the waaaay backseat– like in a 15-passenger van.  That said, it made everything seem so much deeper.  When teenagers liked each other, it was out of deep respect and appreciation for each other, not silly, fluffy, he/she-is-so-hot-that-I’m-melting nonsense.

* Complicated villains.  What’s better than a bad guy that might not be fully bad?

* POV.  Book one is from Todd’s perspective; book two alternates between Todd’s POV and Viola’s; book three adds in a third voice (but I’m not saying whose!).

* An unusual conclusion.  Not the pat, tied-in-a-bow finale YA so often presents.

* I repeat: thought-provoking.  What are the ethics of war?  Can every person be redeemed?  Should war be personal?  What would I do if suddenly everyone had access to all my thoughts?  **shudders**

I highly recommend this series by Patrick Ness.  If you’ve read it, leave your additional comments below.  I also want to know: Team Todd or Team Lee?  What did you think of the ending?

Best New-to-Me Books of 2013 (so far!)

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme over at The Broke and the Bookish.  Today’s topic is

TOP TEN BOOKS I’VE READ SO FAR THIS YEAR.

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10. Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach | The voice in this one is so great, and it’s not super often I read YA aimed at male readers, and I can appreciate that.  It’s about Felton Reinstein the summer he went “from a joke to a jock,” but it’s really about a family falling apart and about friendship in unlikely places and about keeping things together when everything is falling apart.

9. Dr. Bird’s Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos | This was a brilliant debut book by Roskos, and again, great voice!  The main character is an ultra-self-aware high schooler who understands that he is depressed and needs help, only his parents aren’t willing to get him that help.  This is his story of stumbling toward something like healing.

8. Shatter Me by Taheri Mafi | Although I didn’t love the sequel to this book, the first one was riveting.  Juliette’s touch is lethal– to most people, that is.

7. Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi | While I didn’t adore the superfastcramthingsin ending, I was very much drawn to this story about Aria, who lives in a biosphere, and what happens to her outside of it in the “Death Shop.”  I mean, come on.  How can you not want to read a book that has a “Death Shop” in it?  (The sequel– Through the Ever Night— is waiting impatiently on my bedroom floor to be my next read.)

6. The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker | What happens when the rotation of the earth begins to slow?  Beautiful writing.

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5. Attachments by Rainbow Rowell | I think Rainbow Rowell is my best author find of the year so far.  She has the funniest, cleverest voice I’ve read in a long while.  I really liked Attachments, which is about a computer IT man who falls in love with a woman through secretly reading her emails to her friend.  Awkward.

4. Every Day by David Levithan | Gender-bender!  “A” inhabits a different body every day– but loves the same girl every day.

3. Fire by Kristin Cashore | This is the companion book to Graceling, but I actually liked the characters even more than the first book (I liked them too!).  Gosh, how to describe this book?  Fire is a “monster” with red-orange-pink-gold hair, and she can control most people’s minds– but not Prince Brigan’s.  Swoon-worthy.

2. The Knife of Never Letting Go & The Ask and the Answer, both by Patrick Ness | Okay, so I am loving the Chaos Walking trilogy (I’m on the third book right now, so be prepared for a big review!), which takes places on another planet– “New Earth”– where you can hear men’s thoughts– their noise.  Book one was great– book two was incredible.  

1. Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell | This book was brilliant.  I love so much about it– the characters and the writing.  Oh my gosh, the writing is unreal.  I am a total sucker for any YA writer whose words are like lyrics.  This book is about two teenagers who are young enough to know that first love almost never lasts … but willing to try anyway.  I am so excited for her next novel (Fangirl) to be released later this year!

ERP & Imaginal Exposures

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I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about Exposure and Response Prevention therapy (ERP) and how different my life is after I underwent an intense 12 weeks of this type of cognitive-behavioral therapy.  ERP is exactly what the name says it is: you are exposed to something that will trigger your obsessions and then you are prevented from responding with a compulsion that will relieve your anxiety.

For example, someone who has contamination obsessions and hand-washing compulsions might be made to touch garbage and then is not allowed to wash her hands.  Instead, she sits with that anxiety, feeling it intensely.  If someone has HOCD obsessions and seeking reassurance compulsions, she might have to look through a Victoria’s Secret catalog and is not allowed to ask, “Am I gay?  Am I straight?”

So, what happens when you have Pure-O obsessions?  What if your obsession is that you will kill your newborn daughter and your compulsion is to stay away from her crib?  What if your obsession is that you’re going to blaspheme God and go to hell and your compulsion is repeating a prayer in your head?

Then what?  You can’t really kill your daughter (um, big DUH there, but you get it!) and you can’t really go to hell, so how in the world are you able to practice an exposure then?

"little sad song" by *TrixyPixie on deviantART

“little sad song” by *TrixyPixie on deviantART

Imaginal exposures, baby.  Brilliant and brutal.

In situations like these, what you might be expected to do is to write down all the ways you could kill your daughter, read it into a digital recorder, and then listen to it over and over.  Or maybe you’ll create a story in which you go to hell, where you’re forever condemned, and you read that story again and again.

If you’re an obsessive-compulsive, trust me, these imaginal exposures are going to FREAK. YOU. OUT.  They will be so triggering and so terrifying that your anxiety is going to spike, no problem.

Meanwhile, no compulsions allowed.

Meanwhile, ERP is re-wiring your brain.

Meanwhile, you’re stepping toward freedom.  And “all” you had to do was listen to a story.

This was my particular brand of ERP actually.  I had to listen to my recording for about 80 minutes a day until my anxiety levels (self-measured at the beginning, middle, and end) decreased by 50%.  For the first ten weeks or so, my anxiety levels were NOT dropping, and I very nearly gave up.  I mean, why put myself through this misery and terror every day if it was doing no good?

But then.

Sometime during week eleven, those anxiety levels started to drop.  I developed a whole new way of looking at my intrusive thoughts.  I tiptoed up to OCD.  I can still remember the day when I was listening (again) to that horrid recording, and instead of feeling anxious, my thought was, “This is getting so annoying.”

And then I laughed … because … because finally.  You know what I mean.

On My Mind (& a small request)

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onmymindRecent thoughts from yours truly:

* Sometimes depression feels so very close.  It sneaks up on me.  I blink once and its arms are wrapped around me, tight, suffocating, relentless, strong.  How strong am I really?

* I used to be an extrovert.  Now I’m an introvert.  (Granted, the world’s most outgoing introvert.)  I feel grateful for all the friends and families who made that transition with me.  It was a wide, wide swing, and they hung in there with me.

* Who even reads this blog?  Would you (for me) take the extra effort to leave a comment with:

1. Your name (mine is the name of this website)
2. Where you’re from (me: Kimball/Mpls, MN)
3. Your happiness-in-a-pinch fix (me: Barnes & Noble giftcard, an encouraging email, the smell of lilacs or crabapple trees or any other devastating floral scent)
4. A moment/memory of becoming yourself (me: when I realized that I don’t have to take every piece of writing advice)
5. What you’re most looking forward to in the next year (me: VCFA!)

(I stole these questions from Antonia.)

Seven Friends

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We were supposed to make promises,
let our tongues taste commitment
and then say things aloud.

But the afternoon sun made us lazy,
lying on the warm wood of that dock,
while one—I think it was you—
dragged a reed through the waters,
that slick rip the only noise.

We were sixteen, seventeen, and
thought we’d already made our plans,
imagined the future was our own.

Seven of us that summer, and the next,
only two.

You and I made awkward conversation,
their absences throbbing like wounds
between us as we wished for that day

on the dock, when—given another chance—
we would have found our voices.

dockcrop

Untitled, for Lane

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UNTITLED
for Lane

I can never forget the summer night that
turned into morning with no help from us.
We talked about waiting
but barely knew the word.

And I always thought I could teach you things,
but you were chasing sunsets and pyramids,
islands and adventure.

My words were never the hammock
where you’d nap on lazy days.

I became a moon, orbiting you,
and you became the boy
who never looked at the sky.

Luna by Adeline Spengler

Luna by Adeline Spengler

Hope Begins in the Dark

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hopeinthedark

 

I love when my worlds collide.  This quote from Anne Lamott’s brilliant book Bird by Bird can be seen through every lens of this blog: faith, OCD, creativity.  Here’s the full quote:

“I heard a preacher say recently that hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”

Five Secrets

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Random 5 Friday is a weekly meme over at A Rural Journal.

Today I’m going to tell you five secrets.  Well, with varying levels of secrecy.

1. After 10 years as a recruiter, I still get nervous for almost every meeting I have with a prospective family.  You just never know how it’s gonna go– you might be meeting with a world-class teenager with incredible poise and leadership potential– or with someone who can’t look you in the eye or even answer a yes-or-no question.

2. I get wildly envious of my friends’ writing.  What can I say?  I surround myself with brilliant artists, and so, while I am so happy for them and proud of them, I’m also green with envy when I read that perfect, precise, delicate, wild, and buzzing image that they wrote and I did not.

3. Being healthy is such a struggle for me.  I love chocolate and hate exercise.  In fact, the only way I can get myself to exercise is by dangling the carrot of an audiobook in front of me.  It works.

4. I want a boyfriend, like, yesterday.  A hot one.  Who likes to read and loves Jesus.  And if he has an Australian accent and is a home improvement contractor, all the better.  (Anyone know a Christian Property Brothers-esque Aussie with a penchant for great literature?)

5. I don’t read my Bible and pray every single day anymore.  And yet, God feels nearer to me than ever before.

You should tell me a secret now too.

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