A review by quadrille
Gone by Michael Grant

4.0

The last time I was in a Barnes & Noble, I popped over to see which Michael Grant books they had -- answer: Gone and Messenger of Fear. Having seen more people on his Twitter feed chattering about Gone, and seeing that Stephen King had blurbed it, I decided to nab ebooks of this series.

It turns out that the Stephen King blurb is so appropriate, because this book reads like the YA version of Under the Dome, but meets Lord of the Flies and WITH SUPERPOWERS. In short, it's everything way up my alley!! In some senses it's actually even more disturbing than Under the Dome, because holy hells the things that happen. The things that happen. Grant does not pull his punches, and definitely succeeded in his goal to creep out teenagers, considering I was shuddering through certain parts of this story (AND I AM NOT EVEN A TEENAGER). Not a lot of books merit the "nightmare fuel" category, but this one's certainly up there with its body horror.

Disclosure: I specifically checked this book out I was curious to see how Michael Grant's solo writing compares to his work with his wife/co-author, K.A. Applegate, and to see if I could spot any shared DNA with Animorphs. And I came to this book hot on the heels of having just finished my grand Animorphs 2015 Reread, so part of me was stuck on the old series and couldn't stop comparing the two, particularly in the makeup of its team characterisations:
- Sam: Half-Jewish reluctant leader, brave and responsible.
- Astrid: Psychologically manipulative love interest (and I mean this in the best of ways! she props up our leader and drags him back into the metaphorical saddle).
- Edilio: TVTropes told me he was an Expy of Marco, and ngl this was actually one of my reasons to pick up the series in the first place...

Still, though, that's only three characters, so that's not too bad. And the villainous characters here, while still pretty moustache-twirly, already have the potential for so much more growth & development/depth than in Animorphs: Caine Soren is a fascinating character, already with more layers than Visser Three, and I just want to see more of him, more more. I love Caine and Diana's dynamic so much (and how she always calls him Fearless Leader, which is actually a nice parallel to Jake). As always, I'm often drawn to the villains in a story, what is my life.

Quinn is... interesting, I suppose.
SpoilerI wanted him to die a horrendous death and for Sam to have to have manpain over the death of his best friend, but I guess a pseudo-redemption arc is okay too. (The ultimate irony will be if he becomes one of my favourite characters in future books :|) I do like his struggles in an abstract way -- because yes, not everyone is bound to be courageous in a messed-up dystopian environment springing up overnight. And it's the 'wrestling with being the non-special best friend that everyone overlooks' thing like Ron in Harry Potter. And not every member of the team can be beloved by the reader. Not every character has to be likeable, and I'm intrigued to see where his arc goes from here, and I get what Grant is doing. But ugh, I just can't get over his repeated racist digs at Edilio, and he's still firmly on my 'hate' list for now. I can objectively appreciate the craft while subjectively hating the character as a person.


Another thing I especially like: how the Good Guys Trio parallels and contrasts the bad guy trio. Sam vs. Caine, with their
Spoilerbrothers and abandonment and mommy issues
. Astrid vs. Diana, the women standing by the sides of their men, and actually much smarter than them in some ways. Quinn vs. Drake, their anxieties about not having superpowers, about just being average joes living in the shadow of their leaders.

There's some nice diversity in the book too, with Latino, black, Asian, and part-Native American characters interspersed throughout; Mary is bulimic and Pete is autistic, and yet it doesn't come across as an ~*issues*~ book at all, just an honest examination of a realistic population.

In general, for now, I've come to the conclusion that Applegate's prose and characterisation may be better; the characters are more flat here, and the writing even more utilitarian than Animorphs. But Grant is great at plot and high-octane scenes, at holyshitwhatthefuck moments and making your spine crawl. That said, the pace is also nice and slow in this big ole book: it's about 4-5 times longer than the Animorphs books were, and the first half is especially languid before shit hits the fan.

3.5 stars-ish -- mainly docked for the fact that it took me a while to get into this, and I'm not quite so feverishly attached to the characters (yet). But I have to say that after I passed the ~60% marker, this book got its claws into me; I found myself looking forward to my morning work commute, because it meant I'd be able to keep reading. I also tore immediately into the sequel after finishing, and poking around on Goodreads, general reception for this series seems to be great, so I'm stoked.

My review sucks, this is just a random scattering of thoughts. So as a summary: If you're a fan of survival and cobbled-together society and youths trying to hack it on their own, and superpowers!!, then give this a shot. I'm excited to see where it goes as a series, and hoping my impression will jive with other people and that I'll have ALL THE FEELINGS from later books. :')


Favourite quotes:
Spoiler   One minute the teacher was talking about the Civil War. And the next minute he was gone.
   There.
   Gone.

***

   Sam Temple kept a lower profile. He stuck to jeans and understated T-shirts, nothing that drew attention to himself. He had spent most of his life in Perdido Beach, attending this school, and everybody knew who he was, but few people were quite sure what he was.

***

   “Call to him,” Quinn suggested in a strange, carefully enunciated, formal voice. He was embarrassed by his freak-out. But at the same time, he wasn’t quite done freaking out.

***

   “No, I’m sorry. I meant, you’ll help me find Petey?” Astrid asked.
   “Sure.” Sam wanted to add that he would help her anywhere, anytime, forever, but that was just his own fear talking, making him want to babble. Instead, he started toward his own house, knowing now beyond doubt what he would find, but needing to check, anyway, and to check something else, too. Needing to see if he was crazy.
   Needing to see if it was still there.
   This was all crazy. But for Sam, the crazy had started long before.

***

   “If you’re going in there, wrap this around your face.” Somehow Astrid had come up with a wet cloth, borrowed from someone and soaked.
   “Did I say I was going in there?” Sam asked.
   “Don’t get hurt,” Astrid said.
   “Good advice,” Sam said dryly, and wrapped the wet fabric around his head, over his mouth and nose.
   She grabbed his arm. “Look, Sam, it’s not fire that kills people, it’s smoke. If you get too much smoke, your lungs will swell up, they’ll fill with fluid.”
   “How much is too much?” he asked, his voice muffled by the cloth.
   Astrid smiled. “I don’t know everything, Sam.”
   Sam wanted to take her hand. He was scared. He needed someone to lend him some courage. He wanted to take her hand. But this wasn’t the time. So he managed a shaky smile and said, “Here goes.”

***

   So that she wouldn’t keep looking at him the way she was looking at him and feeling sorry for him, he said, “You think they’re all still alive somewhere?”
   “Yes.”
   “You think that because you really think so, or because you just want them to be alive?”
   “Yes,” she said, and smiled.

***

   Astrid laughed. “You’re one of those people, I think. You go along in your life just sort of living. And then something goes wrong and there you are. You step up and do what you have to do. Like today, the fire.”
   “Yeah, well, to tell you the truth, I kind of prefer the other part. The part where I just live my life.”

***

   Sam clambered up, tossed his shovel aside, and beat the dirt from his jeans. “It was a good idea, Edilio.”
   “Like what you did at the fire, man,” Edilio said. “You saved the hardware and the day care.”
   Sam didn’t want to think about what he had saved or not saved.

***

   Edilio stood even straighter and, despite being six inches shorter than Quinn, seemed to be looking down at him. In a calm, quiet voice Edilio said, “Honduras is where my folks are from. They had to come all the way through Mexico before they even reached the border. My mom works as a maid. My father is a farmhand. We live in a trailer and drive an old beater. I still have a little accent because I learned Spanish before I learned English. Anything else you need to know, man?”
   Quinn said, “I wasn’t trying to start anything, amigo.”
   “That’s good,” Edilio said.
   It wasn’t a threat, not really. And in any case, Quinn had twenty pounds on Edilio. But it was Quinn who took a step back.

***

   He looked for a long time at the guns. Automatic weapons versus baseball bats.
   “Don’t go down that road,” Sam muttered.
   He left the gun closet and closed the door firmly. But his hand rested on the knob awhile. Then he shook his head. No. It had not gotten to that point.
   Not yet.

***

   “No offense, Astrid, but no way,” Edilio said. He put his hands on his hips, squared himself up to Sam, and said, “Man, it’s time you started telling us the truth. I respect you, man. But how am I going to respect you if you lie to me?”
   Sam was caught off guard. It was the first time he, or any of them, had seen Edilio angry.
   “What do you mean?” Sam stalled.
   “There’s something going on, man, and it’s about you, all right?” Edilio said. “That light just now? I saw that light before. I saw it just before I pulled you out that window from that burning building.”
   Quinn’s head snapped around. “What? What are you saying?”
   Edilio said, “The wall and the disappearing people, that’s not all of it. There’s some other strange thing going on. Something is going on with you, Sam. And Astrid too, since she was pretty quick to try to cover for you just now.”

***
   “We have to keep this quiet,” Edilio said. “We can’t be telling anyone. People don’t like people they think are better than they are. If regular kids find out about this, it’s going to be trouble.”
   “Maybe not,” Astrid said hopefully.
   “You’re smart, Astrid, but if you think people are going to be happy about this, you don’t know people,” Edilio said.

***

   “Now, who else speaks for Perdido Beach?”
   Bouncing Bette said, “Sam Temple here went into a burning building to rescue a little girl. He can speak for me, anyway.”
   There was a murmur of agreement.
   “Yeah, Sam is a hero for real,” a voice said.
   “He could have died,” another voice seconded.
   “Yeah, Sam’s the guy.”
   Caine’s smile came and disappeared so quickly, Sam wasn’t sure it had happened. For that millisecond it was a look of triumph. Caine walked straight up to Sam, open and forthright, hand extended.
   “There are probably better people than me,” Sam said, backing away.
   But Caine grabbed his elbow and maneuvered him into a handshake. “Sam, is it? It sounds like you truly are a hero. Are you related to our school nurse, Connie Temple?”
   “She’s my mother.”
   “I’m not surprised that she would have a brave son,” Caine said with deep feeling. “She’s a very good woman. I see you’re humble as well as brave, Sam, but I . . . I’m asking for your help. I need your help.”
   With the mention of his mother, everything fell into place. Caine. “C.” What were the odds that “C” was some other kid from Coates?
   Sooner or later, C or one of the others will do something serious. Someone will get hurt. Just like S with T.
   “Okay,” Sam said. “If that’s what people want.” A few other names were mentioned, and Sam halfheartedly, but loyally, named Quinn.
   Caine’s eyes flickered from Sam to Quinn, and for just a millisecond there flashed a cynical, knowing look. But it was gone in a heartbeat, replaced by Caine’s practiced expression of humility and resolve.

***

“That went better than I hoped,” Caine said to Diana. “I predicted there’d be some local bully we’d have to deal with. And I said there would be a natural leader. We get the bully working for us, and we keep an eye on the leader until we’re ready to deal with him.”
   “I’ll keep an eye on him,” Diana said. “He’s cute.”
   “Did you get a reading on him?”
   Jack had seen Diana take Sam’s hand. So he was amazed when Diana said, “No. I didn’t have a chance.”

***

   “You don’t have the right to beat on people,” Sam said.
   Drake had a shark’s grin: too many teeth, too little humor. “Someone has to make people listen to the rules. Right?”

***

   What had Albert worried was something entirely different: No one was working. No one but Mary and Dahra and occasionally Edilio. Everyone else was moping or wandering or fighting or else just sitting around and playing video games or watching DVDs. They were all like rats living in an abandoned house: they ate what they found, messed wherever they liked, and left things dirtier and more rundown than they found them.
   It couldn’t last. Everyone was just killing time. But if all they did was kill time, time would end up killing them.

***

   The other entry talked about work as the “activities necessary for the survival of society.”
   “Yeah,” Albert said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
   He started reading. He jumped from volume to volume, understanding only part of what he was reading, but understanding enough to follow another lead and then another. It was exactly like following hyperlinks, only slower, and with more lifting.
   “Work” led to “labor,” which led him to “productivity,” which led to someone named “Karl Marx,” which led to another old guy named “Adam Smith.”
   Albert had never been much of a serious student. But what he had learned in school had never mattered much from his point of view. This mattered. Everything mattered now.

***

   Diana sighed and sat up slowly, brushed a piece of lint from her blouse. “Don’t get pissy with me, Caine,” she warned. “I’m the one who said we needed to start collecting birth certificates.”
   Drake had made time to check out Diana’s psych file the day after the FAYZ came. But her file had been missing by then. In its place she had left Drake’s file lying open on the doc’s desk and drawn a little smiley face beside the word “sadist.”
   Drake had already hated her. But after that, hating Diana had become a full-time occupation.

***

   “He was holding the one girl’s hand when she bugged,” Drake added. “Looking right into her eyes. See, the first girl goes and they all know what’s coming at that point. The second girl, she was weepy over it. I was too far off to hear what she said, but you could tell she was basically wetting herself.”
   “Sadism,” Diana said. “The enjoyment of another person’s pain.”
   Drake stretched his shark grin. “Words don’t scare me.”
   “You wouldn’t be a psychopath if they did, Drake.”

***

   “What is it you want to do?”
   He shrugged. He had a way of doing that in a way that didn’t express doubt or uncertainty but was more like a person sloughing off a heavy burden, freeing himself up to act.

***

   “So, your father disappears and you don’t even want to know why?” Caine asked. “Interesting. Me, I’ve always wanted to know who my real parents were.”
   “Let me guess: you’re secretly a wizard who was raised by muggles.”
   Caine’s smile was cold. He raised his hand, palm out. An invisible fist hit Sam in the face. He staggered back. He barely stopped himself from falling, but his head was reeling. Blood leaked from his nose.
   “Yeah. Kind of,” Caine said.

***

   Sam swallowed blood and bile. “What questions?”
   Diana rolled her eyes and turned to Caine. “See how easy that was?”
   Amazingly, Caine took it from Diana. No threats, no attack on her, just seething and resentment and acceptance.
   He’s in love with her, Sam realized with a shock. The times he had seen them together there had never been any outward sign of affection, but there was no other possible answer.

***

   He spun. A noise behind him.
   “It’s not working, is it?” Astrid said.
   “It almost did, you almost scared me enough to make it happen,” Sam said.
   Astrid came closer. “I have a terrible thing I want to tell you.”
   “A terrible thing?”
   “I betrayed Petey. Drake. He wanted me to call him a name.” She was twisting her fingers together so hard, it looked painful.
   Sam took her hands in his. “What did he do?”
   “Nothing. Just . . .”
   “Just what?”
   “He slapped me a couple of times, it wasn’t so bad, but—”
   “He hit you?” It felt like he had swallowed acid. “He hit you?”
   Astrid nodded. She tried to explain, but her voice betrayed her. So she pointed at the side of her face, at the place where Drake’s hand had hit her with enough force to jerk her head sideways. She steadied and tried again. “No big deal. But I was scared. Sam, I was so scared.” She stepped closer, wanting maybe to have his arms around her.
   Sam took a step back. “I hope he’s dead,” he said. “I hope he’s dead, because if he isn’t, I’ll kill him.”
   “Sam.”
   His fists were clenched. It felt like his brain was boiling inside his skull. His breath came shallow and harsh.
   “Sam,” Astrid whispered. “Try it now.”
   He stared, uncomprehending.
   “Now,” she yelled.

Continued in comments, bc apparently I just love this straightforward writing style.