tellytubby101 | Book Review: The Gone Series

Final Rating: 8.5 out of 10.

Quick Summary: A world without adults is a world of chaos. And suddenly, the kids of Perdido Beach get to experience that chaos. Everyone fifteen years and older has suddenly disappeared. Those that are left... are beginning to mutate.

[Individual book titles: Gone, Hunger, Lies, and coming soon: Plague].

A lot of people described these books as a mixture of X-Men and Lord of the Flies with a dash of Stephen King and Heroes. I think that sums it up pretty nicely - but the world Michael Grant, the author, has created so artfully is much, much more than that. He is an excellent narrator, his use of multiple POVs refreshing and well executed.

So, the plot is this. Kids at school, bored, half-listening to their teacher. Then, their teacher disappears. There's disbelief. There's shock. And then every child realises this is not a game and chaos breaks. Enter protagonist, Sam Temple, who tries to set some order. Now, this idea would be entertaining enough without the next, added element: kids are mutating and getting some scary powers. Some kids, like Sam, are using their powers for good.

Now meet Caine, general charmer and overall badass. Meet Drake, fucked up school reject who's very sadistic. And then meet The Darkness, an entity no one can confirm as human... or from this planet. Hello trio of bad boys who wants to screw up the system.

What's interesting about the Gone Series is how many people get a "voice", as it were. It's more common to see a story told only from the lead character's view. These books swap very smoothly to different characters, and really allows to empathise with the entire community of lost, abandoned children. Yes, even the baddies get a say, and you can sort-of hear and understand their justifications.

I really enjoyed how the kids were shown. There seemed to be no limit to the cruelty of "normals" vs. "freaks". Grant wrote a realistic path of how all the children had to find out the hard way about the perils of staying alive - along with the price of food when trucks couldn't stockpile the shelves.

Every person was an individual. It showed mentally handicapped people - those with Autism and anorexia/bulimia. It showed the view of a lesbian and the view of a foreigner and it showed the view of an abused child. It's pretty encompassing, and the cast isn't white-washed: there are blacks and whites and Mexicans and asians and people from all around the world.

The books don't brush over death, torture (oh God, there was a really intense bit with concrete), and even alludes to cannabalism. The darkness is not overwhelmingly angst-ridden, but very emotional as all the children come to grips with being left without their parents.

There are a million little details I loved within the books - especially the timer countdown as each chapter heading. But I shan't say too much for fear of spoilers. The only things I had some issues with were how "convinient" some occurences were, alongside minor plot discontinuities.

These are not light readings. They are pretty hefty novels. Still, worth every minute of robbed sleep.