Gone by Michael Grant

Welcome to the FAYZ, short for Fallout Alley Youth Zone. There’s no one who’s over the age of fourteen; they’ve all “poofed,” they’re just gone. But the strangeness only starts there. There’s a circular wall, or maybe dome, surrounding the land within a ten-mile radius from the nuclear plant. The wall is impenetrable and burns you if you touch it. There are strange mutations in the animals, such as seagulls with talons, winged snakes, and talking coyotes. Some kids have also developed strange powers. The rules of the world are changing, and Sam is running out of time before he turns fourteen and is bound to poof.

The kids from Coates Academy come down to the town of Perdido Beach, and one of them, named Caine, basically takes over. He acts as if he’s benevolent, but people are dying, and it’s because his sheriff and Captain Orc’s little gang of bullies keep beating people up who break the rules imposed on them by Caine. And while some of these rules are actually valid, others prevent people from gaining any power to oppose Caine.

Sam, Quinn, Edilio, Astrid, and Little Pete find themselves thrown together for survival. Sam knows that something is off about Caine, and he also has a power to shoot fire from his hands. They are constantly running from Caine or one of his allies. They eventually meet a girl Lana, who is a healer, and discover that Little Pete has special abilities of his own. When they save a bunch of kids with power from Caine, who had them imprisoned with their hands cemented in blocks, the kids join their movement to take Caine down. The struggle escalates, and all their lives are at stake.

When I first read the summary for this book, I was extremely intrigued. This new world is almost like a parallel universe. I really enjoyed the references to Harry Potter, Star Wars, Hollywood, Agent Orange (the bad), and other literary works. Reading into Astrid and Sam trying to figure out where they were and what was happening to their world was very stimulating. There is a lot of exciting action in this novel, and even though the kids’ powers sometimes seemed like they were taken from the movie The Incredibles, I still enjoyed it. I wanted to cheer and scream at the ending of the novel, and I really hope there will be a sequel to this book. Gone was simply an amazing book; I don’t think I can stress that fact enough, and I recommend it to everyone. This book is very thick, and I hope its length will not discourage anyone from reading this fantastic story.

Rating: 4.75

Review copy borrowed