Gone / Michael Grant.

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Title:

Gone / Michael Grant.

Author:

Grant, Michael, 1954-

ISBN:

9780061448782

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

New York : Katherine Tegen Books, 2014.

Physical Description:

558 p. : maps ; 22 cm.

Series:

Gone ; 1

Series Title:

Gone ; 1

Abstract:

In a small town on the coast of California, everyone over the age of fourteen suddenly disappears, setting up a battle between the remaining town residents and the students from a local private school, as well as those who have "The Power" and are able to perform supernatural feats and those who do not.

Subject Term:

Supernatural -- Juvenile fiction.

Good and evil -- Juvenile fiction.

Survival -- Juvenile fiction.

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Avon-Washington Township Public Library	Teen Fiction Book Paperback	120791002419297	T GRA	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Avon-Washington Township Public Library	Teen Fiction Book Paperback	120791002907937	T GRA	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

The first in New York Times bestselling author Michael Grant's breathtaking dystopian sci-fi saga, Gone is a page-turning thriller that invokes the classic The Lord of the Flies along with the horror of Stephen King.

In the blink of an eye, everyone disappears. Gone. Except for the young. There are teens, but not one single adult. Just as suddenly, there are no phones, no internet, no television. No way to get help. And no way to figure out what's happened.

Hunger threatens. Bullies rule. A sinister creature lurks. Animals are mutating. And the teens themselves are changing, developing new talents--unimaginable, dangerous, deadly powers--that grow stronger by the day.

It's a terrifying new world. Sides are being chosen, a fight is shaping up. Townies against rich kids. Bullies against the weak. Powerful against powerless. And time is running out: on your birthday, you disappear just like everyone else. . . .

"A potent mix of action and thoughtfulness--centered around good and evil, courage and cowardice--renders this a tour de force that will leave readers dazed, disturbed, and utterly breathless." --ALA Booklist (starred review)

Read the entire series:

Gone Hunger Lies Plague Fear Light Monster Villain Hero

Reviews (4)

School Library Journal Review

Gr 7 Up-"One minute the teacher was talking about the Civil War. And the next minute he was gone." Just vanished-along with everyone else over the age of 13 in a 20-mile radius around Perdido Beach, CA. The children left behind find themselves battling hunger, fear, and one another in a novel strongly reminiscent of William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Things go from bad to worse when some of the children begin exhibiting strange powers, animals show signs of freakish mutations, and people disappear as soon as they turn 14. Though an excellent premise for a novel, Gone suffers from a couple of problems. First, it is just too long. After opening with a bang, the initial 200 or so pages limp along before the action begins to really pick up. Secondly, based on the themes of violence, death, and implied sexual intimidation, this is clearly written for an older teen audience who may not appreciate the fact that no one in the book is older than 13. In spite of its faults, Gone is a gripping and gritty read with enough creepy gruesomeness to satisfy readers who have a taste for the macabre. Give this one to the readers who aren't quite ready for Stephen King or Dean Koontz.-Jane Henriksen Baird, Anchorage Public Library, AK (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Guardian Review

It's axiomatic that for the fun to start the adults must be disposed of. Michael Grant does this in the most perfunctory and audacious way. From a chunk of southern California, everyone over the age of 15 vanishes in an instant, just like that - poof! Teachers in mid-sentence, drivers from cars, parents at home, all gone. These opening pages are excellent; the "liberated" children's swift modulation from thrilled excitement to panic is deftly, economically and wittily written. (The first screams come when the kids realise their cellphones and the internet are down.) It transpires that the small town of Perdido Beach and its environs have been isolated from the world by an egg-shaped force-field. Our hero, Sam Templeton, and his friends Astrid, Quinn and Edilio assume responsibility for holding anarchy at bay. A sweet girl called "Mother" Mary takes charge of the pre-school nursery. In a lovely touch, a boy named Albert sombrely reopens McDonald's, aware that the availability of number-one combos is the linchpin of civilisation as we know it. Then a convoy of cars from Coates Academy creeps into town. Coates is a residential school for "difficult" (for which read "deeply weird") children. The leader of the contingent is Caine, a charismatic boy who mellifluously assumes power. He is, of course, Bad, and soon enough a battle between Sam and Caine, Good and Evil, develops. We would seem, then, to be in Lord of the Flies territory. But Gone is no dystopian parable. It is not bothered overmuch with questions about social cohesion in the absence of authority. Grant addresses a far more pressing FAQ, namely "What the hell can we write to lure boys away from their PlayStations and Xboxes?" His answer - and he's not a lone voice - is "Books that are prose versions of games". And he has succeeded brilliantly in producing one. The action is incessant; the kids discover or acquire superpowers (death ray or healing hands, telekinesis, invisibility); they mutate (into Gravel Boy or Whip Hand); violence is continuous and incrementally gruesome; there's a clock running (both Sam and Caine, who turn out to be - surprise, surprise - twin brothers, are fast approaching their 15th birthdays); religion is scattered throughout the text, but it's nothing more than another grab from the tool bar. It's like reading through your jittering thumbs. Writing the "game novel" involves certain sacrifices, of course, but these are only literary. In Gone , the characters are crude two-dimensional digitisations, their motives sketchy. Dialogue is recycled from American action movies. Narrative moves from level to level, answerable to no logic other than its own, unconcerned with authenticity. Like the game, it refuses joyfully to have anything to do with real life. It's very exciting. Grant knows exactly what he's doing. Now and again, he allows himself irony. In the best chapter of the book, Albert goes to the library to research the meaning of "work". "He found a set of encylopedias - like Wikipedia, but paper and very bulky . . . It was exactly like following hyperlinks, but slower, and with more lifting." Does it all work? Well, yes, in one respect at least. Gone comes across the Atlantic on a tsunami of rave reviews, most of them posted on websites by teenagers. That's a result, and you really can't argue with it. Grant left me wondering if it might be possible to marry the reductive conventions of the game console to real writing. Maybe the next volume ( Gone threatens to become a trilogy, at least) will provide the glimpse of an answer. The volume two "taster" attached to this book suggests levels of nastiness almost worthy of Dante. Mal Peet's Exposure is published by Walker. Caption: article-malpeetkids.1 It transpires that the small town of Perdido Beach and its environs have been isolated from the world by an egg-shaped force-field. Our hero, Sam Templeton, and his friends Astrid, Quinn and Edilio assume responsibility for holding anarchy at bay. A sweet girl called "Mother" Mary takes charge of the pre-school nursery. In a lovely touch, a boy named Albert sombrely reopens McDonald's, aware that the availability of number-one combos is the linchpin of civilisation as we know it. Then a convoy of cars from Coates Academy creeps into town. Coates is a residential school for "difficult" (for which read "deeply weird") children. The leader of the contingent is Caine, a charismatic boy who mellifluously assumes power. He is, of course, Bad, and soon enough a battle between Sam and Caine, Good and Evil, develops. - Mal Peet.

Kirkus Review

Teens survive in a shifted world. Everyone in Perdido Beach over the age of 13 vanished one morning, leaving Sam and his friends to rebuild their community. Facing pressure from brutal prep-school interlopers, Sam hastens to uncover the mystery of the disappearances and gain control over his new powers--not-quite-laser beams that shoot from his hands and burn his enemies--all before his rapidly approaching 14th birthday. Seeking to blend David Lubar's Hidden Talents (1999) with Lord of the Flies, Grant's amalgamation of supernatural gifts and adult-free society instead leaves readers confused and unsatisfied. Weak characters and tepid action scenes create a sense of ennui that receives no respite from the convoluted plot and half-formed explanations. Sophisticated horror fans will recognize the mutated creatures and indescribable underground evil as a pale nod to Stephen King's Desperation (1996). Grant attempts to deal with too much, from autism to bulimia to divided families, and the thin writing is unable to sustain the weight of those issues. (Fantasy. 12 & up) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* It's a scenario that every kid has dreamed about: adults suddenly disappear, and kids have free reign. In this case, though, it's everyone 14 and older who disappears, and the harsh reality of such unreal circumstances isn't a joyride after all. A girl driving with her grandfather plunges into a horrific car wreck; gas burners left on ignite a home with a young child trapped inside; food and medical supplies dwindle; and malicious youths take over as the remaining children attempt to set up some form of workable society. Even stranger than the disappearance of much of humanity, though, are the bizarre, sometimes terrifying powers that some of the kids are developing, not to mention the rapidly mutating animals or the impenetrable wall 20 miles in diameter that encircles them. This intense, marvelously plotted, paced, and characterized story will immediately garner comparisons to Lord of the Flies, or even the long-playing world shifts of Stephen King, with just a dash of X-Men for good measure. A potent mix of action and thoughtfulness centered around good and evil, courage and cowardice renders this a tour-de-force that will leave readers dazed, disturbed, and utterly breathless. Grant's novel is presumably the first in a series, and while many will want to scream when they find out the end is not the end, they'll be glad there's more in store.--Chipman, Ian Copyright 2008 Booklist

Excerpts

Gone Chapter One 299 hours, 54 minutes One minute the teacher was talking about the Civil War. And the next minute he was gone. There. Gone. No "poof." No flash of light. No explosion. Sam Temple was sitting in third-period history class staring blankly at the blackboard, but far away in his head. In his head he was down at the beach, he and Quinn. Down at the beach with their boards, yelling, bracing for that first plunge into cold Pacific water. For a moment he thought he had imagined it, the teacher disappearing. For a moment he thought he'd slipped into a daydream. Sam turned to Mary Terrafino, who sat just to his left. "You saw that, right?" Mary was staring hard at the place where the teacher had been. "Um, where's Mr. Trentlake?" It was Quinn Gaither, Sam's best, maybe only, friend. Quinn sat right behind Sam. The two of them favored window seats because sometimes if you caught just the right angle, you could actually see a tiny sliver of sparkling water between the school buildings and the homes beyond. "He must have left," Mary said, not sounding like she believed it. Edilio, a new kid Sam found potentially interesting, said, "No, man. Poof." He did a thing with his fingers that was a pretty good illustration of the concept. Kids were staring at one another, craning their necks this way and that, giggling nervously. No one was scared. No one was crying. The whole thing seemed kind of funny. "Mr. Trentlake poofed?" said Quinn, with a suppressed giggle in his voice. "Hey," someone said, "where's Josh?" Heads turned to look. "Was he here today?" "Yes, he was here. He was right here next to me." Sam recognized the voice. Bette. Bouncing Bette. "He just, you know, disappeared," Bette said. "Just like Mr. Trentlake." The door to the hallway opened. Every eye locked on it. Mr. Trentlake was going to step in, maybe with Josh, and explain how he had pulled off this magic trick, and then get back to talking in his excited, strained voice about the Civil War nobody cared about. But it wasn't Mr. Trentlake. It was Astrid Ellison, known as Astrid the Genius, because she was . . . well, she was a genius. Astrid was in all the AP classes the school had. In some subjects she was taking online courses from the university. Astrid had shoulder-length blond hair, and liked to wear starched white short-sleeved blouses that never failed to catch Sam's eye. Astrid was out of his league, Sam knew that. But there was no law against thinking about her. "Where's your teacher?" Astrid asked. There was a collective shrug. "He poofed," Quinn said, like maybe it was funny. "Isn't he out in the hallway?" Mary asked. Astrid shook her head. "Something weird is happening. My math study group . . . there were just three of us, plus the teacher. They all just disappeared." "What?" Sam said. Astrid looked right at him. He couldn't look away like he normally would, because her gaze wasn't challenging, skeptical like it usually was: it was scared. Her normally sharp, discerning blue eyes were wide, with way too much white showing. "They're gone. They all just . . . disappeared." "What about your teacher?" Edilio said. "She's gone, too," Astrid said. "Gone?" "Poof," Quinn said, not giggling so much now, starting to think maybe it wasn't a joke after all. Sam noticed a sound. More than one, really. Distant car alarms, coming from town. He stood up, feeling self-conscious, like it wasn't really his place to do so, and walked on stiff legs to the door. Astrid moved away so he could step past her. He could smell her shampoo as he went by. Sam looked left, down toward room 211, the room where Astrid's math wonks met. The next door down, 213, a kid stuck out his head. He had a half-scared, half-giddy expression, like someone buckling into a roller coaster. The other direction, down at 207, kids were laughing too loud. Freaky loud. Fifth graders. Across the hall, room 208, three sixth graders suddenly burst out into the hallway and stopped dead. They stared at Sam, like he might yell at them. Perdido Beach School was a small-town school, with everyone from kindergarten to ninth grade all in one building, elementary and middle school together. High school was an hour's drive away in San Luis. Sam walked toward Astrid's classroom. She and Quinn were right behind him. The classroom was empty. Desk chairs, the teacher's chair, all empty. Math books lay open on three of the desks. Notebooks, too. The computers, a row of six aged Macs, all showed flickering blank screens. On the chalkboard you could quite clearly see "Polyn." "She was writing the word 'polynomial,'" Astrid said in a church-voice whisper. "Yeah, I was going to guess that," Sam said dryly. "I had a polynomial once," Quinn said. "My doctor removed it." Astrid ignored the weak attempt at humor. "She disappeared in the middle of writing the 'o.' I was looking right at her." Sam made a slight motion, pointing. A piece of chalk lay on the floor, right where it would have fallen if someone were writing the word "polynomial"--whatever that meant--and had disappeared before rounding off the "o." "This is not normal," Quinn said. Quinn was taller than Sam, stronger than Sam, at least as good a surfer. But Quinn, with his half-crazy half-smile and tendency to dress in what could only be called a costume--today it was baggy shorts, Army-surplus desert boots, a pink golf shirt, and a gray fedora he'd found in his grandfather's attic--put out a weird-guy vibe that alienated some and scared others. Quinn was his own clique, which was maybe why he and Sam clicked. 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. He was a surfer who didn't hang out with surfers. He was bright, but not a brain. He was good-looking, but not so that girls thought of him as a hottie. Gone . Copyright © by Michael Grant. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Gone by Michael Grant All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.