Monsters of Men

Monsters of Men is the third and final book in Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy, first published by Walker Books in the UK in May 2010 and by Candlewick Press in the US that September.

On the planet New World, three armies are closing in on New Prentisstown: the settlers' forces, the rebel Answer led by Mistress Coyle, and the Spackle, the planet's native people, who have joined as one to avenge what was done to them.

Todd Hewitt and Viola Eade, who have been pulled apart and thrown together by everything that came before, are caught between the sides while a fleet of new settlers draws near and a single wrong move could end every hope of peace.

The story is told in three voices, Todd's, Viola's and that of a Spackle bent on revenge, and each of them has to decide how far they will go and what they are willing to become. Ness keeps the pace fast and the moral questions hard, asking what makes a person a monster and whether anyone on a battlefield can stay clear of being one.

The novel won the 2011 Carnegie Medal and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. It is the conclusion readers of The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer have been waiting for, and it is best read after them.