Chaos Walking Trilogy (Book 2)
We start with Todd and Viola having made it to Haven only to be met by Mayor Prentiss, who arrived first. The Mayor has taken over the town and this book is a description of the struggle for control over the town. The Mayor controls most men and the town proper, while most women follow Mistress Coyle and her efforts to resist the Mayor. Clearly Coyle and the Mayor have history and their antagonism runs deep. Ness, having developed the strange idea of Noise in the first volume, is now using the Noise as a differentiator between the establishment and the rebellion as well as a potential weapon in this war. Perhaps the most interesting developments in the story are those that surround questions of how to resist a tyrant, and how to avoid violence or escalation. You easily see the blowback coming as a reader, and wonder why it is so hard in reality to see blowback in advance. Ness also lays out in pretty simple characters the various approaches to war, violence and resistance. He also doe a good job of showing that there is no ideology that works in all cases. Life and conflict are complex, and the decisions that we make are never made in isolation. I was cautious after book 1 in this series, but Ness does a good job with further world development and idea development that makes this book worth reading. I will bump this series up to
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