The Ask and The Answer is a brilliantly captivating novel that really drew me in and gave me something to look forward to when I picked it back up.

The story is one of adventure, separation and most importantly love: two best friends get flung into a war for their planet. However, they are flung into the opposite sides of the war; Viola with The Answer, and Todd with The Ask. The Ask and The Answer captures Todd and Viola’s attempts to cope with the horrors that each side perform, and their struggle to stay friends and companions as they both know the terrible things that they have each done.

In the world of The Ask and The Answer the settlers have been infected with a virus called the Noise Virus, which causes the men to produce Noise, made up of what they are thinking: pictures, words, colours and emotions. This ability to see what some characters are thinking really involves you with them and can let you empathise with the characters. The Noise also plays a key role in the plot of The Ask and The Answer: The Answer made from all women, who have no noise; and The Ask, the military force under command of Mayor Prentiss (the main evil character from the previous book in the series: The Knife of Never Letting Go) which is made from mainly men who all have the Noise.

Although being the sequel to The Knife of Never Letting Go and the second in the Chaos Walking series, The Ask and The Answer does well as a stand-alone novel. It provides subtle explanations for all the quirks and differences in the fantasy New World to our own.

The novel is written in the first person and therefore lots of words are spelt phonetically. For example: ‘cuz, thru, tho, vibrayshun, expresshun’

At first I found this very annoying; however I soon got used to it and it actually added to the overall atmosphere of the book.

In all this was a extremely involving, exciting and sophisticated novel which was targeted on our age-group which made it a very nice book to read. The Ask and The Answer has been my favourite book so far and so I will give it a respectable nine out of ten.