Somehow, I missed the memo that Patrick Ness wrote a short story prequel for his Chaos Walking Trilogy. I didn't hear about it until this week, when a former co-worker mentioned that she'd picked up the books, hoping they'd continue the story about Viola's life on a generation ship. As you might know, generation ships are a subject near and dear to my heart. I'd also been somewhat frustrated by Viola's sparse characterization in The Knife of Never Letting Go (admittedly, the only Chaos Walking book I've read so far), so I picked up a free copy of "The New World" for my nook, hoping it would give me some insight into her character.

Of course, much of what makes Viola Eade a compelling character in The Knife of Never Letting Go is her inscrutability, the mystery presented by her oblique, female mind in a world where narrator Todd is used to hearing the unfiltered thoughts of those around him. I was a bit worried that when we actually entered Viola's perspective, there was no way that Ness could live up to that sort of promise.

But I was pleasantly surprised. Viola's voice and characterization were easily the best part of "The New World." She's got a wry sense of humor that is both imminently readable and genuinely, thoroughly, and undoubtedly thirteen. Through this true-to-life voice, Ness builds a narrative of her life through jumbled flashbacks. And it's in matters of adolescent characterization that he's most successful here generally. Not only is Viola very precisely and accurately characterized, but her school rival Steff is also cunningly drawn.

"I'll miss you," Steff Talor said at our going away party, her voice twisting up high, making it sound even more insincere than it is.

All the caretaker families had gathered in the conference room of the Delta for the party, happy for any excuse to get drunk and say goodbye. Steff swept me up into her arms in a hug angled so that everyone around us would see her face, how sad she was that I was going away for a year. Then she let me go and collapsed into her mother's arms with a wailing that was louder than anything else in the room.

Unfortunately, the broader premise of "The New World" is not nearly so incisively accurate. The idea is that Viola's parents are picked to form a landing party, and so Viola, too, is recruited to be part of the first shuttle of explorers on the eponymous planet. But despite another character's assurances that she's brilliant and capable, the idea of employing a thirteen year old as a shuttle crew member (and locking her away for months with only her parents) strikes me as a preposterous one—almost surely a recipe for disaster. I had significant trouble believing that the generations who have prepared for this journey would not have anticipated the inevitable disaster we reach by this brief story's conclusion.

And, worse, the emotional register of that disaster just felt off, loud and a touch cliché. That's too bad, because Viola is a likeable character. But I found her plight more touching in The Knife of Never Letting Go--and she was a complete cipher there. Ultimately, though this is a nice bonus for Ness fans, it's really not a necessary (or, as a standalone, even sufficient) read.