On Sale: 07 April 2026
Publisher: Walker Books
Length: 352 Pages
ISBN: 9781529528992
This review has taken me almost a month to write, mainly because I realised pretty quickly that I would understand the first installment of the New World trilogy – the second trilogy set in the Chaos Walking universe- if I had read the Chaos Walking books. So I did, and you can read that review here. Ultimately, I am exceedingly glad I did read the first series before reading Piper at the Gates of Dusk, because while it absolutely CAN be read as a standalone, you lose so much of the depth of world building, character development and general atmosphere of the novel of you try to go it alone.
New World (the planet), makes so much more sense when you understand the events of Prentistown, the history of Todd and Viola’s relationship, the intimate familiarity of the status of the Land, and the Sky for those of us who pay attention to politics, and why it really matters, more than I can say, that the two main characters of this book are respectively, transgender, and, disabled. On a personal note – as a queer, trans, cripple, I want to say thank you to Patrick Ness for writing a book that speaks to the kid I wish I had been able to be, but couldn’t because, well, it was the 80’s. That this book has been published on the eve of the UK government publishing guidance for schools on how transgender children should be treated (it’s horrific, truly horrific), makes it all the more poignant. Trans kids deserve to see themselves as the heroes of stories. They deserve to see that they are brilliant and brave, that they are resourceful and resilient, that they can be the main chatacters in their own stories, that they can be the people who make the right choice, even it is hard, even when the adults around them are making the wrong choices.
Before anyone complains that this is being too political about a work of fiction- all storytelling is political, all existence is political, and there are few lives more political than those of marginalised young people. In this blog we will absolutely talk about the politics underpinning a text!
So yeah. This is a book that hits a little different. The rich, really quite spectacular worldbuilding complements the equally rich moral philosophy that it is structured on. For me – and other readers may disagree – Piper at the Gates of Dusk is a clear lesson in understanding how fascism utilises a framework of fear, othering and entitlement to creep up on you, until you’ve got tanks and goosestepping troops marching through the main street of town, telling you that now everything will be ok. It never is in real life, and I am looking forward to books two and three of this New World trilogy to see how things end for Todd and Viola, for our new protagonists and for the Land and Sky.
There isn’t really anything I disliked about the book – which in itself is a thing I dislike – most books for me will have a few things I wish they’d done differently, but really the only thing I can come up with, is that I didn’t love that the book switches between points of view, so you end up with something like 4 narrators. That’s hardly a critique of this book – it’s a writing device I generally dislike, so the fact I still gobbled the book down in under 48 hours, should tell you that Ness knows what he’s about, because I read and loved the book anyway.
Rating (out of five):🛡️🛡️🛡️🛡️🛡️
Do Expect: a still dystopian setting, obvious and uncomfortable parallels to the current state of things, regularly switching narrators
Don’t Expect: A comfortable read, a happy ending, a lack of emotional conflict as you read along
