The Ask and the Answer

Chaos Walking

Content Ratings

Mild Romance

Todd and Viola's emotional connection deepens under separation; their longing for each other is palpable and central to both of their story arcs; the relationship remains emotionally intense but chaste.

Intense Themes

The novel sustains themes of how ordinary people become complicit in atrocity, the ethics of violent resistance to oppression, torture, the psychological control of subjugated populations through information denial, and the corruption of power.

High Violence

Terrorist bombings, torture of prisoners, mass execution, and the use of women as a suppressed underclass are depicted with unflinching directness; the moral ambiguity of resistance violence is central to the story.

Synopsis

Separated and captive in the occupied New Prentisstown, Todd and Viola are placed on opposite sides of a brutal civil conflict between Mayor Prentiss's totalitarian order and the Answer, a resistance movement whose methods grow increasingly extreme. Told in alternating chapters that force both characters and readers to question every side, the novel is one of the most morally complex YA novels published. Darker and more demanding than its predecessor.