Gone

Rating T+ Genre sci-fi Author Michael Grant Publisher Harper Collins

Gone should not have worked. It is a Frankenstein’s monster made up of equal parts Left Behind, The Lord of the Flies, and X-Men. Such a combination should have sent me fleeing for my literary life. But Michael Grant pulls it off, and he does it with a great amount of energy and mystery.

Sam is a normal thirteen-year-old boy in a fairly average small town. In a flash, every single person aged fourteen and older disappears, and the children who remain – infants, or “prees,” to thirteen year olds – are left to fend for themselves. Sam finds himself in the position of leader, because he is the first person to step up and give instruction. He really is uncomfortable with the position and when another boy, Caine, emerges from the town’s private school for troubled children, Sam is more than happy to step aside and allow him to bear the burden of leadership.

However, complications continue. Several of the children, Sam and Caine included, discover they possess strange powers. Some can move objects without touching them. Some can move incredibly fast. And some, like Sam, can fire energy blasts from their hands. This puts the children against one another. Many of those with power – the freaks – are recruited by Caine. If any resist Caine’s will, there are consequences. It is up to Sam and his friends to defeat Caine and bring peace to their small, cut-off section of this new and crazy world.

But there is something more. Something unseen, and terrifying. Something that may be behind all of this insanity. And to make matters even worse, there is a time limit. As soon as a child turns fourteen, they disappear, too. For Sam, this is a matter of days, not months.

As I begin the wait for the next book in the series, I find myself somewhat afraid. Afraid because, realistically, my expectations for the solutions to all the mysteries Grant raises in this book almost certainly cannot be met by the answers Grant will provide. This goes for any action-packed, mysterious story. But I’m optimistic that, at the very least, Grant will take us on an incredible ride, and that there are answers out there, waiting to be discovered.

Going so far as to make statements about the world we live in today, and doing so through the eyes of young children, Gone is a powerful and exciting story that will hold teens, and older audiences, riveted until the conclusion.