More Than This

More Than This - Patrick Ness
472 pages

In the opening pages of More Than This, Seth dies. Then he wakes up. Not in his small Pacific Northwest town, but in England where he grew up. However, things are… different. He is alone, every house and store he comes across is abandoned; even the birds have disappeared. The weather patterns are unusual. There is an unearthly black coffin in his childhood home’s attic. Is he in hell? Somewhere else?

This isn’t Patrick Ness’s first foray into dystopian landscapes; his Chaos Walking trilogy is one of the true stand-outs in the overcrowded YA dystopian fic genre. More Than This is more slowly paced and contemplative than Chaos Walking, but the philosophical meanderings are dotted with enough action and suspense to keep it moving at a steady clip. Ness’s writing is superb as always, but an unexpected (and somewhat irksome) plot twist toward the middle of the book threw me for a loop. I found the Cormac McCarthy-ish bleakness of the first 200 pages and the absolutely stellar cover design (that door is actually a cutout to the title page) to be the highlights of the book.