Gone

Reading can often be a personal experience. Not only is it the act of reading itself an intimate episode filled with complex thoughts and emotions, but also seeing our reaction to books over time can be special for each of us. One can always find it exciting to understand something in a novel that evaded you as a kid. It can also be maddening to see a book you formerly loved change into one you find lacking. For me, a book that I read when I was a kid was the novel Gone by Michael Grant. I remember reading it and liking it, but I never continued with the series, and I could never explain my reasons. Now, years later, I can understand why I did not love this series, and also offer a solid explanation.

This novel begins with an exciting premise. In the blink of an eye, everyone over the age of fifteen disappears from the small town of Perdido Beach, California. Of course, the kids start going crazy with this new found freedom, eating everything unhealthy in sight. After they come to their senses, they soon realize that something even stranger is going on: there is a dome covering the town with no way to get through it to the outside. They also begin to develop strange superpowers. Some kids can rapidly heal extensive injuries, and others can shoot beams of light from their hands. Then, there are the kids themselves. Those kids that were school bullies are now those who cause terror through intimidation. Soon, however, the concerns over the local school yard bullies is superseded when the kids from Coats Academy arrive. The kids from Coats, on a good day, can be devilishly clever, deviantly troublesome, and, in some cases, dangerously demented. Add in superpowers into the mix, and their behavior can become alarming to the enth degree. As if mentally unstable bullies with super powers weren't enough, then there is the wildlife. Animals are slowly beginning to change and evolve in unsettling ways such as snakes developing wings, cats teleporting and the local coyotes talking.

This is a very interesting premise, that Grant manages to use all it is worth. To start with, there is the sense of anxiety over how to handle everyday things. As you may have thought once or twice at a young age, a world without adults can seem like fun. There are no rules. You can eat whatever you want, never have a bedtime, and you can even watch the movies your parents tell you you're too young to view. Grant takes this premise to its logical conclusion. Everyone 15 and younger stays within the dome, including babies and toddlers. Who is going to clean up the messes, and help the kids learn basic hygiene skills? Grant writes a scene showing just that with 50 babies and toddlers and two teens taking care of them that made me exhausted just reading it. Then there is the food problem. All throughout the events of the novel, there is the nagging dilemma of how to get food. The town was not made for sustainable living, or even basic farming, so the reader knows, and the characters soon realize, that there will be a food crisis, and people are going to starve to death, whether they like it or not. This makes for excellent reading just in terms of the basic premise alone.

Grant uses his considerable writing talent to show the super powers, different animals, and evil characters in a very creepy light. For example, in one scene, a kid takes a late night walk into the library to find out more information on the dome. He soon finds a cat that does not like him, as the cat constantly teleports onto him, scratching and biting to get him to leave. At one point, the character holds up a thick book to defend himself, and the cat literally fuses with the book, so that you can't turn the pages of the book because there is cat in the way, and the cat can't breathe because there are pages in the middle of it's lungs and intestines. This is a sufficiently unsettling scene any horror fan would love.

The villains are just as diabolically written as the creepy animals. The kids soon realize that the powers they have mostly seem to be activated through their hands (putting hands on a wound to magically heal it, for example). To control those kids with powers who don't fall in line, one of the villains decides to encase their hands together in solid concrete. This means the kids can't eat by themselves, change clothes by themselves, or even go to the bathroom by themselves. Couple this with the fact that most of the goons are neglectful of their duties to help their prisoners, and you soon have starving kids wallowing in their own filth. Grant writes it as sickening as one can make it, without going out of the YA territory.

On the note of the villains, let talk about the characters and how they are written. Grant does an excellent job writing action scenes and knowing how to write horror scenes, but tends to falter in terms of characterization. Almost all of the characters fall into basic archetypes, such as the insane main villain, the twisted bully given too much power, the smart girlfriend, and the noble main hero. While this does make for easy reading, it isn't something that lends to painting a picture or helps me attach to the characters. The character arcs are also fairly minimal, with characters changing very little by the time the story ends. This means that we are more witnessing the spectacle of the situation our characters are in, rather than the characters development over the course of the novel. This is something I want to see improved upon in the sequel.

And, yes, I am looking forward to the sequel. While this book may be lacking in description, I do think it has potential for a nine book series. There is also the idea that here is the first YA book I have seen in a long time that can be read by younger teens. So many books labeled YA are meant for more mature teens or even adults, and I struggle to find one for younger audiences. This series, so far, is perfect for that demographic. I give this book a three out of five.