Sam Downing

Honestly, Patrick Ness couldn’t have ended the Chaos Walking trilogy in a more perfect way.

The first two books in the series, The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer, stand out for their inventiveness, their fierce pace, and their vivid characters. Monsters of Men meets their standard, then ups the stakes, then ups them again, and then again. There are a billion points in the story where I didn’t think Ness could ratchet up the tension any more – and then he does.

Avoid spoilers, if you can. I’m not giving anything away, so, vague summary ahead: Monsters of Men is about young people coming into power, guided by those who are in power already (and who, in most cases, have been corrupted by it). Our heroes Todd and Viola are mostly back together again, in the sense that they share many more scenes than they did in Ask and find ways to communicate even when they’re apart, but they’re still constantly buffeted and battered by the competing forces of Mistress Coyle and Mayor Prentiss.

Who, by the way, is the strongest and most difficult character. Is he really the villain of this story, or is he its hero? Ness doesn’t answer that question (and nor should he), instead crafting a character who is at once charismatic, paternal, untrustworthy and chilling. Which is just the way it should be. Of all the characters in Chaos Walking, the Mayor will stay with me the longest.

(And maybe Manchee. Love that dog.)

Kudos to Ness for avoiding the drippy sentiment that often plagues finales (Deathly Hallows, anyone?), but he does cheat a few times: a lot of the support characters feel stand-in-ish, and a couple of the plot twists seem like they’ve been thrown in for shock value rather than to enhance the story. (Particularly the very final twist, which came thisclose to ruining the whole series for me. Ultimately, though, Ness turns it into a very satisfying conclusion.)

I’ve been lucky with the series: I only started reading it in the month leading up to Monster’s release, meaning I didn’t have to wait a year between instalments like everyone else. I literally read all three entries one after the other. So I’m not sure what the feeling is in the Chaos Walking fanbase – but I have a feeling they’ll like the final book as much as I did.

The Laws of Magic series continues to check all the right boxes: Cracking – check. Inventive – check. Intriguing (in the best sense of the word, the one that implies spies and politics and conspiracies) – check. In Word of Honour, junior magician Aubrey Fitzwilliam and his pals save the capital of the great nation of Albion, their universe’s incarnation of England, from magical distruction; in Time of Trial, they travel to Holmland – that is, Germany – in an attempt to avert war.

Time is the better of the two, because the stakes are higher: war is close, Holmland is dangerous, and the romantic tension between Aubrey and Caroline is more electric than ever. (Seriously, if they don’t at least share a chaste kiss in the next instalment, I will die.)

These are good books, though I do have one complaint. And it’s a biggie.

The villain of the piece – who I won’t name, because it’d spoil the end of Blaze of Glory, though I will refer to him as “he”, which isn’t really a spoiler since almost all of Laws of Magic’s major characters are men¹ – is not a formidable enough opponent for Aubrey, our protagonist. I don’t mean that in the sense that the villain isn’t powerful; we’re constantly reminded of his power. I mean that he’s not a compelling villain.

In Word of Honour the villain runs around concocting plots intended to spark a world war, basically as a means to securing his own power. (His motives are revealed in more detail in Blaze, though again, I don’t want to spoilt it.) But he’s a villain because we’re told he’s a villain – he doesn’t really do anything especially villainous. And even when he does appear on the page, he’s a bit two-dimensional. “Evil and smug cackle, I have you in the clutches of my nefarious plan now,” etc.

In Time of Trial Michael Pryor attempts to rectify this by expounding on the villain’s backstory, revealing details about his family and background. Though it’s still unsatisfying – who is this guy? Why is he like this? How come he doesn’t just kill Aubrey? I’ve read all four books in the series so far and I don’t really have a sense of the bad guy. He’s just “the bad guy” to me, and I want him to be more. (In Pryor’s defence, I have the same beef with Lord of the Rings. Sauron = zzzzz.)

1. Note: that’s not the say the series has no strong female charaters, because it does, just that most of the major characters have penises. Which fits the books’ early-20th century setting. [↩]