So I finished 'Monsters of Men' last night...
Oh don't deceive me
Oh never leave me...
Non-spoilery thoughts on the Chaos Walking trilogy
Okay. The ending was perfect. This whole trilogy was as close to being perfect as I could have hoped. Chaos Walking is one of those epic war & quest stories, like 'Lord of the Rings', 'Battlestar Galactica', the 'Hunger Games' etc, that could easily have buckled under the weight of its own ambition and apocalyptic chaos. Instead it found exactly the right note to end on and tied up most of its loose threads, even ones from Book 1 which I thought might have been forgotten in the end. I'm almost tempted to call it "the Lost that doesn't disappoint" because it has the same thrills, mystery and moral ambiguity of Lost (at its best) with villians who mindfuck the heroes better than Benjamin Linus ever did, but it comes to a conclusion that works...thematically and on a character level too. Wow.
I read an interview recently where Patrick Ness said his main inspiration was Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban. Which has always been a favourite novel of mine and seems to have directly influenced all sorts of things I love like 'Cloud Atlas' and 'Mad Max beyond Thunderdome'. But while 'Riddley Walker' was always an incredible conceptual piece, 'Chaos Walking' uses a similar idea and world, and gives it a gripping narrative drive, which admittedly Hoban's novel lacked. The strong narrative makes me wonder if they could adapt Chaos Walking into an epic film trilogy, but it'd be difficult to depict "the Noise" onscreen. On the page the concept of endless unfiltered thoughts spewing from men's brains is brilliant, but in a movie it'd be a big disruption. And I love that Ness says "the Noise" was inspired by Internet culture. How perfect can he be?
I might have to go to the Hay Festival just to stalk this author...