Gone – Deluxe Edition Author: Visit Amazon's Michael Grant Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1742979904 | Format: PDF
Gone – Deluxe Edition Description
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Series: Gone
- Paperback: 576 pages
- Publisher: Hardie Grant Egmont; Special edition edition (April 1, 2014)
- ISBN-10: 1742979904
- ISBN-13: 978-1742979908
- Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
"The Lord of the Flies" was one of the most unsettling books that I read at school (over 45 years ago!). It combined the horrifying realization of the Milgram experiments - that decent, ordinary people could behave in unspeakable ways with the minimum of a contextual shift - with an entirely believable set of characters in an all-too-plausible situation. I could identify with them, see friends (and rivals) around me who would react as Golding's creations had done. And the basic plot seemed wholly original: it wasn't one of the classic patterns that writer after writer had taken a crack at.
So how would you update it for the 21st century? How do you achieve the sudden enforced isolation of a group in an alien environment? In an era of GPS and satellite communications, it's hard to disappear, impossible to isolate. "The Truman Show" suggested a way that might work for one person, and "Gone" borrows some ideas from this world-in-a-bubble, but as the idiom goes "that doesn't scale". How about the characters - and the audience? And who is the audience, anyway? Golding wrote his masterpiece as an allegory for all ages, but that's a rare achievement.
Michael Grant decides to focus on the "young adult" audience, which means that the book has to compete in a world of "Buffy", reality TV, and videogames. In keeping with the zeigeist, the isolation of the young protagonists is achieved through a science fiction device: a "rapture of the adults". And the games begin.
OK, so I'm not the target audience of this book, but no matter. If adults can cross over to "Harry Potter", I don't see why I can't enjoy "Gone". And I did. Mostly. The first half of the book is really strong: some great scenes that Golding would have enjoyed.
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.
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