This young adult dystopian science fiction trilogy is set on a distant planet where all living things broadcast their thoughts aloud as a constant noise — except, mysteriously, women — and follows a teenage boy whose encounter with a girl from a crashed settler ship forces him to question everything he has been taught about his world. The trilogy is intense, philosophically rich, and emotionally demanding, dealing with themes of war, propaganda, and what it means to be human.
On a world where a germ has made all thoughts audible as constant Noise, thirteen-year-old Todd is the last boy in an all-male settlement and is about to come of age when he discovers a silent spot in the Noise a girl and is forced to flee everything he knows. Relentless in its pace and unflinching in its violence, the novel is one of YA science fiction's most propulsive and emotionally shattering first installments. The opening of the Chaos Walking trilogy.
Separated and captive in the occupied New Prentisstown, Todd and Viola are placed on opposite sides of a brutal civil conflict between Mayor Prentiss's totalitarian order and the Answer, a resistance movement whose methods grow increasingly extreme. Told in alternating chapters that force both characters and readers to question every side, the novel is one of the most morally complex YA novels published. Darker and more demanding than its predecessor.
The Chaos Walking trilogy concludes as full-scale war breaks out between the settlers and the indigenous Spackle, with Mayor Prentiss and the Answer's leader manipulating the conflict, while Todd and Viola try to prevent a catastrophe and the Spackle find their own voice through a new perspective. The most politically and ethically complex volume of the trilogy, introducing a third narrative voice. An emotionally devastating and morally serious conclusion.