More than this

Review by Booklist Review

He dies. So ends the first chapter of Ness' latest meld of genre fiction and soul-searching prose, wherein 16-year-old Seth violently drowns in the ocean. There is, of course, a catch: Seth wakes up in his former England home, suffering near-total amnesia and covered in metallic bandages. The neighborhood appears long deserted, and so Seth begins to scrounge empty stores for food and clothing. It's when he sleeps, however, that pieces of his past come rushing back: his culpability in the kidnapping of his little brother eight years earlier, his bespoiled sexual relationship with a boy from school, and even hints at how on earth he ended up here. Edging any further into plot is a minefield of spoilers, as the book's chief propulsion tactic is the turning of unexpected corners. Ness' knack for cliff-hangers, honed in the Chaos Walking series, remains strong, while the spare, gradual, anytime, anyplace quality of the story recalls A Monster Calls (2011). Repeated, similar battles with an antagonist feel like a distraction; nevertheless, Ness has crafted something stark and uncompromising. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Ness is in the midst of a major critical and commercial hot streak. An author tour and more will seek to extend it.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Seth Wearing, age 16, dies in the opening pages of this complex, ambitious novel from Ness (A Monster Calls) and, arguably, that isn't the worst thing that happens to him. After drowning, Seth awakens in the suburban London neighborhood where he lived before his family relocated to the Pacific Northwest. The old neighborhood is now a dust-covered ruin; there is no noise, no electricity, and, at first, not another soul around. Is this hell? A tortured dream? Seth's search for understanding requires Ness to move between the unsettling present and Seth's past, slowly revealing his sad childhood, his awful mother, and the bright spot in his young life-his relationship with schoolmate Gudmund. When even that romance ended in sorrow, Seth grasped for a reason to live. The Matrix-like science fiction elements of the story are somewhat fuzzy, and even the characters continually question the logic of the circumstances they are stuck in. But Ness's exploration of big questions-specifically Seth's yearning to find out if life will ever offer more than the rotten hand he's been dealt-will provide solace for the right readers. Ages 14-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 10 Up-Seth remembers dying. His remembers splitting his head on the rocks and drowning. But now he is awake again, naked and lost in his old home in England. Seth wanders the empty, desolate streets of town, eating spoiled food, looking for any signs of life, finally considering he may very well be in his own personal hell. When he attempts to sleep, his dreams are filled with vivid memories of despair. The memories are so terrible, in fact, that he begins to prefer this new world over the dreams, awful as it is. He's thinking about trying to end it all when he hears a car engine roar to life. Nick Podehl's expert narration portrays the characters' voices believably and with emotion. A few sexual situations and mild language make this appropriate for slightly older teens. Purchase where demand for dystopian fiction is high and Ness ("Chaos Walking" series) has a following. Listeners will be clamoring for a sequel.-Amanda Schiavulli, Finger Lakes Library System, NY (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Horn Book Review

In the wake of The Lovely Bones, a subgenre of young adult novels was born wherein a dead protagonist moves on to the afterlife for the real action of the story, and Nesss latest novel fits neatly into this relatively recent tradition. What sets his apart is that the world-building, rather than becoming increasingly clearer, instead remains an enigma that puzzles and perplexes the charactersnot to mention the reader. As the novel opens, Seth violently drowns in the ocean; he soon wakes up in a world like his own, but seemingly without people. Painful memories plague him: the abduction of his younger brother in the distant past and more recent ones of the fallout from his romantic relationship with another boy. He wanders for awhilea long whilebefore he finds two other teens, Regine and Tomasz. Together, they dodge the mysteriously dangerous Driver while trying to make sense of their lives, their apparent deaths, and their current warped reality. Ness (the Chaos Walking trilogy; A Monster Calls, rev. 9/11) is not only a good storyteller but an interesting prose stylist, and his latest effort is as provocative as ever. Nevertheless, the gay subplot lacks satisfactory resolution, and the overwritten third-person present-tense narration makes the novel feel more important than it really is; consequently, the audience for this book narrows considerably from Nesss previous work. jonthan hunt (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Seth, not yet 17, walks into the Pacific Ocean and ends his life. Or does he? He wakes, groggy, in front of the house in England where he spent his childhood, before his little brother, Owen, was kidnapped and the family moved to America. He spends days in a dust-covered, desolate landscape scavenging for food in empty stores, imagining that he's in a "hell built exactly for him." His dreams are filled with vivid memories of his life: his romance with a boy named Gudmund, a photo that's gone viral, and farther back, his inability to keep Owen safe. Seth is rescued by a girl named Regine and Tomasz, a younger, Polish boy, from pursuit by a silent, helmeted figure they call the Driver. Past and present collide as Seth struggles to determine what's real and what isn't, whether circumstances are all of his own doing. He faces doorways everywhere, with genuine death seemingly just beyond, but there are hints of something even more sinister going on. There are no easy answers either for Seth or readers. With a nod to Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Ness brilliantly plays with contrasts: life and death, privacy and exposure, guilt and innocence. In characteristic style, the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy delves into the stuff of nightmares for an existential exploration of the human psyche. (Fiction. 14 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Here is the boy, drowning. In these last moments, it's not the water that's finally done for him; it's the cold. It has bled all the energy from his body and contracted his muscles into a painful uselessness, no matter how much he fights to keep himself above the surface. He is strong, and young, nearly seventeen, but the wintry waves keep coming, each one seemingly larger than the last. They spin him round, topple him over, force him deeper down and down. Even when he can catch his breath in the few terrified seconds he manages to push his face into the air, he is shaking so badly he can barely get half a lungful before he's under again. It isn't enough, grows less each time, and he feels a terrible yearning in his chest as he aches, fruitlessly, for more. He is in full panic now. He knows he's drifted just slightly too far from shore to make it back, the icy tide pulling him out farther and farther with every wave, pushing him toward the rocks that make this bit of coast so treacherous. He also knows there is no one who'll notice he's gone in time, no one who'll raise the alarm before the water defeats him. He won't be saved by chance, either. There are no beachcombers or tourists to dive in from the shoreline to save him, not this time of year, not in these freezing temperatures. It is too late for him. He will die. And he will die alone. The sudden, gasping horror of knowing this makes him panic even more. He tries again to break the surface, not daring to think that it might be his last time, not daring to think much at all. He forces his legs to kick, forces his arms to heave himself upward, to at least get his body the right way round, to try and grasp another breath just inches away­ - But the current is too strong. It allows him tantalizingly near the surface but spins him upside down before he can get there, dragging him closer to the rocks. The waves toy with him as he tries again. And fails. Then, without warning, the game the sea seems to have been playing, the cruel game of keeping him just alive enough to think he might make it, that game seems to be over. The current surges, slamming him into the killingly hard rocks. His right shoulder blade snaps in two so loudly he can hear the crack, even underwater, even in this rush of tide. The mindless intensity of the pain is so great that he calls out, his mouth instantly filling with freezing, briny seawater. He coughs against it, but only drags more into his lungs. He curves into the pain of his shoulder, blinded by it, paralyzed by its intensity. He is unable to even try and swim now, unable to brace himself as the waves turn him over once more. Please, is all he thinks. Just the one word, echoing through his head. Please. The current grips him a final time. It rears back as if to throw him, and it dashes him headfirst into the rocks. He slams into them with the full, furious weight of an angry ocean behind him. He is unable to even raise his hands to try and soften the blow. The impact is just behind his left ear. It fractures his skull, splintering it into his brain, the force of it also crushing his third and fourth vertebrae, severing both his cerebral artery and his spinal cord, an injury from which there is no return, no recovery. No chance. He dies. Part 1 Chapter 1 The first moments after the boy's death pass for him in a confused and weighty blur. He is dimly aware of pain, but mostly of a tremendous fatigue, as if he has been covered in layer upon layer of impossibly heavy blankets. He struggles against them, blindly, his thrashing increasing as he panics (again) at the invisible ropes that seem to bind him. His mind isn't clear. It races and throbs like the worst kind of fever, and he is unaware of even thinking. It's more some kind of wild, dying instinct, a terror of what's to come, a terror of what's happened. A terror of his death. As if he can still struggle against it, still outrun it. He even has a distant sensation of momentum, his body continuing its fight against the waves even though that fight has already been lost. He feels a sudden rushing, a surge of terror hurtling him forward, forward, forward, but he must be free of his body somehow because his shoulder no longer hurts as he struggles blindly through the dark, unable to feel anything, it seems, except a terrified urgency to move  - And then there is a coolness on his face. Almost as of a breeze, though such a thing seems impossible for so many reasons. It's this coolness that causes his consciousness - His soul? His spirit? Who's to say? - to pause in its fevered spin. For an instant, he is still. There's a change in the murk before his eyes. A lightness. A lightness he can enter, somehow, and he can feel himself leaning toward it, his body - so weak, so nearly incapable beneath him - reaching for the growing light. He falls. Falls onto solidity. The coolness rises from it, and he allows himself to sink into it, let it envelop him. He is still. He gives up his struggle. He lets oblivion overtake him. Excerpted from More Than This by Patrick Ness All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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