Gone by Michael Grant • Contains 560 pages • published by Katherine Tegen Books on June 24th 2008 • Classified as YA, Dystopia • Read as audiobook
In the blink of an eye, everyone disappears. Gone. Except for the young.
There are teens, but not one single adult. Just as suddenly, there are no phones, no internet, no television. No way to get help. And no way to figure out what's happened.
Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents—unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers—that grow stronger by the day. It's a terrifying new world. Sides are being chosen, a fight is shaping up. Townies against rich kids. Bullies against the weak. Powerful against powerless. And time is running out: On your 15th birthday, you disappear just like everyone else...
There are teens, but not one single adult. Just as suddenly, there are no phones, no internet, no television. No way to get help. And no way to figure out what's happened.
Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents—unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers—that grow stronger by the day. It's a terrifying new world. Sides are being chosen, a fight is shaping up. Townies against rich kids. Bullies against the weak. Powerful against powerless. And time is running out: On your 15th birthday, you disappear just like everyone else...
A Recipe for Disaster:
- Make all the adults disappear.
- Sprinkle the children with unusual super powers.
- Add one impenetrable barrier around the town so that nobody can get in or out.
- Stir in a psychotic teenage boy who likes to cause pain just for fun and a kid obsessed with ruling the world.
- Let rise for 40 minutes to an hour.
Yields: One very #shook reader who needs to lie down for a bit.
You know when you open a big bag of potato chips, and suddenly, there aren't any left and you can't remember eating them all? That's how I feel about this book. It is a delicious read full of heart-pounding action and thrilling suspense that, despite being over five hundred pages long, speeds by in a whirl. It's fast-paced brilliance leaves you looking down into the empty bag, wondering where it all went.
Our story begins in Perdido Beach, a small dot on the map of Southern California where the only two notable attractions are a slim strip of beach and a nuclear power plant. Yeah, tourists aren't exactly flocking to this place. Perdido Beach might as well be the middle of Kansas for all the action it sees. Or should I say, saw. That all changes one day when everyone over the age of fifteen just...disappears. There one minute and then – poof – gone. Drivers dematerialize from behind the wheel. Mothers vanish while breastfeeding. Teachers disappear mid-lecture. And nobody knows why.
School Bus Sam is one of the kids left behind after "The Big Poof." As chaos unfolds like a nightmarish reenactment of The Lord of the Flies, the children of Perdido Beach start to look to him for guidance. Sam doesn't want to be looked to for guidance. He doesn't want to be a leader and he definitely does not want power. Period. But others, like Caine Soren, do. And they are willing to do anything – and I do mean anything – to get it.
It's easy to write a hero – have him save a runaway baby carriage, have him help an old lady across the street. It's much harder to write a villain. That being said, Caine and his gang of despicable baddies are perfectly written villains. They are Professor Umbridge-level evil. If hate is a strong word, as the saying goes, then it is not near strong enough to describe how much I dislike them. Isn't that amazing? Readers want to feel things when they read a story. They want to be happy, sad, mad, embarrassed, but it takes a really good writer to create those emotions in them. And boy, does Michael Grant create the emotion of hate in his readers. Because, really, I hate Caine and I'm not usually the hating type.
James Scott Bell, the author of Plot & Structure, once said,"The best novels, the ones that stay with you all the way to the end—and beyond—have the threat of death hanging over every scene." Gone does that beautifully. Wonderfully. Amazingly. Every scene is full of danger and charged with a page-ripping need to know what happens next. The stakes are high, the reader's pulse is higher, and everything that could go wrong, does. Yeah, it's one of those kinds of books. And I absolutely loved it.
You know when you open a big bag of potato chips, and suddenly, there aren't any left and you can't remember eating them all? That's how I feel about this book. It is a delicious read full of heart-pounding action and thrilling suspense that, despite being over five hundred pages long, speeds by in a whirl. It's fast-paced brilliance leaves you looking down into the empty bag, wondering where it all went.
Our story begins in Perdido Beach, a small dot on the map of Southern California where the only two notable attractions are a slim strip of beach and a nuclear power plant. Yeah, tourists aren't exactly flocking to this place. Perdido Beach might as well be the middle of Kansas for all the action it sees. Or should I say, saw. That all changes one day when everyone over the age of fifteen just...disappears. There one minute and then – poof – gone. Drivers dematerialize from behind the wheel. Mothers vanish while breastfeeding. Teachers disappear mid-lecture. And nobody knows why.
"Welcome to Perdido Beach, where our motto is: 'Radiation? What radiation?'"
School Bus Sam is one of the kids left behind after "The Big Poof." As chaos unfolds like a nightmarish reenactment of The Lord of the Flies, the children of Perdido Beach start to look to him for guidance. Sam doesn't want to be looked to for guidance. He doesn't want to be a leader and he definitely does not want power. Period. But others, like Caine Soren, do. And they are willing to do anything – and I do mean anything – to get it.
"Ninth graders with machine guns; it's hard to make that a happy story."
James Scott Bell, the author of Plot & Structure, once said,"The best novels, the ones that stay with you all the way to the end—and beyond—have the threat of death hanging over every scene." Gone does that beautifully. Wonderfully. Amazingly. Every scene is full of danger and charged with a page-ripping need to know what happens next. The stakes are high, the reader's pulse is higher, and everything that could go wrong, does. Yeah, it's one of those kinds of books. And I absolutely loved it.
