Chaos Walking: Patrick Ness

A blockbuster of a trilogy in which people behave like people in movies- and so not like human beings at all. It's long- the climactic, gun-pointy stand-off at the end of the second book goes on for fifty pages (I counted),  repetitive (how many times do we need to witness our hero getting beaten up?) and written entirely- breathessly-  in the present tense.