Monsters of Men- Patrick Ness

Book 16 of My Summer Reading Challenge

My rating: 3/5 stars

This is the third book in the Chaos Walking trilogy, which is a series which I really enjoyed reading as I read the first two books, 'The Knife of Never Letting Go' and 'The Ask and The Answer'. I rated those books 4 and 5 stars, which shows that I enjoyed them. So much so that I went on to read this book with high hopes for the ending.

I was disappointed. I am so upset about the ending of this trilogy that I don't particularly want to talk about it. I will start off with some things that I liked about the book and then go onto what I didn't like.

What I liked:

~ I really liked seeing all three sides of the battle with the different POV's with Todd, Viola and even 1017 which was a pleasant surprise and I really liked getting into the head of The Spackle and seeing their motivations.
~ The way in which my emotions about different characters varied throughout the book, with the Mayor and Mistress Coyle. One minute they are the good guys and only want what is best and then the next minute they were the ones causing more havoc.
~ The cover. I had the hardback copy and the sleeve is see through with the white lettering on the sleeve, which I think is pretty cool and I haven't seen anything like it before.
~ This story is so original that I love how different it is. I haven't read anything like this series before and I probably never will again.

Things I didn't like [Spoilers ahead]

~ This book was just over 600 pages long. It was totally unnecessary for what was going on. Yes, there was lots of fighting and the whole war thing between 3 different sides, but I don't feel like a lot actually happened in the book and I feel like the author was just trying to make the book longer by adding areas which did not need to be added.
~ Viola did not get with Lee.
~ Lee was blinded.
~ Acorn was killed off. Poor horse.
~ Viola and Todd fell in love. I saw it coming but I didn't think it needed to be done. It was perfectly fine them being in a friendship and not need to ruin it by having them in a relationship.
~ I wanted to see the ship land and the new settlers arrive.
~ Todd and Viola annoyed me through this whole book.

And finally
~ Todd not dying. As I was reading the end, I knew I was going to give this book 3 stars, but then Todd died, and I thought "The author is going to wuss out and find a way to bring Todd back. If he doesn't I will give this book 4 stars." What does he do? He brings Todd back.

Overall, this book deserves no more than 3 stars, I was even contemplating giving it two but I was kind.