Todd Hewitt grew up on an alien world, in an isolated settlement populated entirely by men—men who can hear each other’s thoughts. When his parents and their fellow colonists settled the planet, they unwittingly exposed themselves to a germ that makes men’s and animals’ thoughts audible and visible to those around them; the result is called Noise. Todd was taught that this same germ killed all the women, and that his town, Prentisstown, contains the last survivors of a vicious war with the planet’s native species—the Spackle—that nearly wiped out both races. But Todd quickly learns that almost everything he thinks he knows is a lie.