Monster by Michael Grant

**IT'S BEEN FOUR YEARS SINCE A METERORITE HIT PERDIDO BEACH AND EVERYONE DISAPPEARED.**

GONE

Everyone, except the kids trapped in the FAYZ--an invisible dome that was created by an alien virus. Inside the FAYZ, animals began to mutate and teens developed dangerous powers. The terrifying new world was plagued with hunger, lies, and fear of the unknown.

Now, four years later, meteorites are hitting Earth with a virus that is even deadlier. Humans will mutate into creatures with power...and the whole world will be exposed.

But power corrupts. As some teens begin to morph into heroes, they will find that others become dangerously out of control and that the world is on the brink of a monstrous battle between good and evil.

And there is only one thing more terrifying than the fear of the unknown: when history repeats itself.

In this first of a trilogy, Michael Grant has created a stunning follow-up to the globally bestselling Gone series.

This description comes from the publisher. *Monster* is the first book in the Monster trilogy; this is the sequel series to the Gone series, the first of which is *Gone*.

Ugh, I love Michael Grant.

It was great to dive back into a Michael Grant novel, specifically in the “Gone” universe. I agree with many of the reviews that Shade Darby was indeed a very annoying character. Still, I found her interesting. I found everyone interesting and everyone had their own story and point for existing in this fictional universe.

The theme of power corrupting was completely outright in this book, in a way I don't think was as directly explained and explored in the rest of the Gone series and I appreciated that insight and the struggle of the corrupting power even with the “heros.” This was explored with Sam a bit as he got more and more annoyed by everyone in the FAYZ and tried not to crumble from the pressure put on him but this book explored more of the INTERNAL struggle with having all this power but still remaining “good.”

Finally, the last line of this book proved to me that no matter how old I get and even though this particular character was not even my favorite....Michael Grant can reduce me into a fan girl even in the dark universe of his scifi/horror. I audibly gasped and reread the last couple lines multiple times haha.

I'm thinking I'm going to reread the whole series, but I'm so invested I almost feel like I'm making the characters relive all the atrocities by rereading the series. Still, this is one of my favorite series by one of my favorite authors and I'm glad I gave this addition to the series a chance.

It’s a great book, I love that it’s more from the gone series and I love the new powers and just the crazy ideas of what the powers could be and just new kinds of powers however I didn’t feel as connected to these characters as I did during the gone series other than the ones that are the OGs. I hope that that’s just because it is the first book and it’ll change but when things happen it feels like it makes less of an impact on me. The powers are insane and so cool though. Just losing the mystery and having it as a straight action book means I like it a bit less as well.