Valet Reader

Gone by Michael Grant

So, I kind of wished this book had “poofed” out of my hands while I read it. If you haven’t read the book you won’t really know what that means or what I’m talking about but for those of you that have had the pleasure of reading this, hmm, how do you say, rather lame book, you do.

In what is in essence a mashup of The X-Men, Peter Pan, Lord of the Flies and Johnny Quest (Quest may be a stretch but I’ve been waiting and waiting to reference that cartoon in one of my posts), Gonepretty much takes the worst elements of each and tries to put them all together. In short, one day all the adults over the age 14 disappear and then some really weird things happen in the ensuing power struggle for dominance.

This book actually had the potential of being pretty good. But, once you throw in talking coyotes, “the darkness” (not the band), machine guns, mutants, MacDonald’s, and the secret neglected brother syndrome you really have a junk pot of a story. Oh, and did I mention that the cover of the book has this odd resemblance to some other incredibly media friendly series of novels involving vampires? Cause I kind of think it does. I have this hunch that Mr. Grant actually wrote this book without the book in mind but with the potential of turning it into big money in the form of movies. After all, before he even started writing Gone he already knew it was going to be a three book series.

I don’t like ripping on books, I really don’t. It’s just that unoriginal ideas don’t really motivate me. Like I said, I think this story had a lot of potential. What young adult out there hasn’t thought about what it would be like if all the adults in the world suddenly disappeared. Sure, they were probably less concerned with the important things such as survival, but at least they could eat all the ice cream and candy they want and play as long they pleased. I don’t know if you ever watched “Kid Nation,” a terrible reality show on CBS, but this book was basically that with some magic thrown-in.

Even if the book wasn’t meant to be read by the likes of me, I am optimistic that the young adults today will recognize this as sub par and belittling to their intellect.