"Gone" Review

Book 3 of 20 for the Dystopian Challenge

If it was a contest between cover art alone, this one would have won Worst Cover Design, hands down. When I was able to put it down, it was always with the cover obscured so I would not have to look at it.

Good and bad with this one. The ideas were very interesting. At the beginning of the book, all people age 15 and older disappear suddenly. Then the remaining children, all 14 and younger, discover that there's a barrier between their town and the rest of the world. And then very strange things start happening.

It's part "Lord of the Flies", part Heroes. Except that all of the main characters are 10-14 years old.

And they talk like they're 14. It gets a little annoying. I suppose it's true to the age, but it's clichéd and shallow. No one wants to remember being that age, do they? I certainly don't. To compound the horror of teenspeak, the story is set in a California beach town. Full of surfers. Gah.

I liked some of the themes explored here, the nature of good and evil, a bit of Cain and Abel, and the ways that lies and manipulation are well or poorly done. Integrity becomes an important part of the story by the end, and not all of the characters see the complete development of their arcs. At least one stands in need of some considerable redemption by the end, and he knows it, too.

The dystopian aspect was well explored. Plenty of room for things to go badly quickly in a world run by children. It becomes a different world, based on the one we know, and I thought the transition into the fantasy world was very well done. I kept thinking, though, would a 14-year-old really be this heroic? Do children have this degree of sophistication in them? I'm still unsure.

Being one of the very worst prognosticators in the world, I was a little dismayed that I correctly predicted several plot twists. It was alright, though. I was still curious about where the story was headed, what strange things were on the next page. And the author's creativity is boundless. By the end, though, so many things were unresolved, so many questions lingered.

I found out after I finished reading this monstrous book (just over 560 pages) that it's the first of six planned books. Six! The second is "Hunger" and the rest haven't been published yet. Right now, I'm undecided about continuing on in the series. I have the feeling that many of my questions won't be conveniently answered in Book 2.