Gone - Michael Grant
First published by HarperTeen: New York, USA, 2008.
Book 1 in the 'Gone' series. Followed by 'Hunger.'
I borrowed this book from a family member knowing nothing about it except that some of my students like it. I soon learned it was seen as a combination of Stephen King meets Lord of the Flies - neither of which are my usual jam (he says, having literally just finished reading a different book by the author of Lord of the Flies).
Yeah, it is like that. Particularly Stephen King's Under the Dome, which I know from the mini-series of the same name. Plus, it also has similarities to Lost (which I loved) and X-Men (some of which I enjoy).
So, anyway...
The basic premise of Gone is that all of a sudden everyone fifteen and older who lives in or near the town of Perdido Beach mysteriously disappears, and the remaining children discover that they are now trapped by a mysterious barrier that has a 20 mile radius, centred mysteriously on the local nuclear power plant. To make things even more mysterious, some animals have started mutating (including snakes with wings and talking coyotes) and some of the children are developing mutant-like superpowers, which seem to be controlled by their hands.
This is a lot, but is told in a very readable and page-turning fashion. I may or may not have finished the book in two days... but it's the holidays, ok?
Our hero, Sam Temple, is a fourteen-year-old who has discovered he has the ability to fire 'light' from his hands. He joins forces with his brainiac love interest Astrid, his reluctant friend Quinn, the new-to-town Edilio, as they look for Astrid's missing autistic brother 'Little Pete' and do battle against the forces of evil.
Now, in this particular book the phrase 'forces of evil' has quite a lot of range to it. At the lower end of the scale are the school bullies Howard and 'Orc', who enjoy being bullies but aren't too much more than that. Further up the scale are the 'Coates Academy', led by Caine Soren - a charismatic boy with dangerous powers - and supported by (among others) Drake Merwin, who is truly a psychopath. And yet, above them there exists another, even more literally 'forces of evil' threat - a strange entity known as 'the Darkness.'
Although this is a young adult series in name, style and main-character-age, readers are warned on the cover that the book 'contains violence and cruelty', and this warning should be heeded. There are elements of this book (particularly, but not exclusively, involving Drake) that are very dark; even in the earlier parts of the book, before the 'weirder' elements increase, we have moments where the dark outcomes of all adults disappearing are made explicit, through the deaths of some neglected children! Fortunately, the book doesn't dwell on these moments, but neither does the author shy away from them. It does occasionally take the book further into the 'horror' vibes of a King novel than I would usually read.
This also means that, at the end of the book, I am unsure whether I will read on. I really enjoyed this book as an easy read. It was exciting, unpredictable, and the right level of un-put-down-able. And yet, I'm not a fan of gore or horror, and I can see that this series could go further in that direction as it continues.
Still, I can absolutely see why it is a popular series.
Completed 20 April 2024.
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