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(4 / 5)
Gone #1
There was so much going on in Gone, it’s hard to know where to start. We jump right into the action in the beginning, when everyone over the age of 14 suddenly disappears. No warning, just a sudden “poof” and they’re gone. So you have a bunch of kids trying to keep order in a world that suddenly has no adults. Oh, and some of the kids have developed super powers. And animals are mutating. And there is a huge electrified wall surrounding the town that prevents escape or rescue from the outside.
With so many elements, it seems like this book is just a train wreck waiting to happen. But somehow, Grant makes it all work! At first I had a little trouble wrapping my head around what was going on, but I was following the same discovery arc as the characters, and feeling their confusion and frustration. And slowly we start to learn more, start to understand more, just as more questions are thrust at us. And in the mad rush of sci-fi weirdness, we are fighting against the bullies struggling to grab power in a chaotic world.
Sam’s character growth and development is great! He’s a natural leader, who doesn’t really want to be a leader. But he cares about people, and that makes him instinctively take charge when other people won’t. So he finds himself at odds with the power hungry who want everything for themselves. And though he tries to shirk the responsibility at first, he eventually has no choice but to lead the charge. Someone has to do something, and that someone is Sam.
Overall, the story really grew on me. It does sometimes drag a bit (Sam constantly seems to be running from something), but really picks up in the later half of the book. I think part of my reluctance to latch onto the story had to do with my issues with the audio narrator, more than the story itself. (For the record, I found the narrator’s natural speaking voice nasally and grating, but this totally disappeared when he was voicing characters. Made for an odd listening experience.) While not the type of genre I normally gravitate to, I will definitely be picking up the rest of the series.