The 'GONE' series by Michael Grant

Despite it being a series of six books, there is no way I could ever review them as individual books; it would be like trying to write a book review for on a chapter of Harry Potter or the first half of the Hobbit. The GONE series is less like a collection of book that follow on from each other, and more like one single story that is just too voluminous to be pack into a single book.

Initially I was reluctant to pick up the first book as I thought it was going to be below my usual reading level and I didn't want to think of myself as reading a book that was aimed and written for much younger people than myself. I now see what a terrible attitude this was to have. However, in the end it was the brightly coloured pages and the contrast between black and neon that drew me to the book and force fingers to turn the first page, and I must say that after the first page was turned, there was no stopping them.

When a melt down happens at the nuclear powerplant, Little Pete Ellison uses his unknown power to create the FAYZ, a 'protective' barrier around Perdido Beach and all of its residents. However in his ignorance, Little Pete teleports everyone aged fifteen and over outside the dome, leaving hundereds of children to fend for themselves in a world riddled with mutant creatures. Fortunately, Sam Temple steps up to the plate and takes the role of mayor in this very different town. Through out the story, you will follow these children as they prematurely become young adults, as they fight to survive the FAYZ.

The thing that shocked me the most about these incredible books if the connections that you create with the characters and the way these feelings change so dramatically. The best example of this would be the connections I made with the character 'Diana Ladris'. Diana is the girlfriend and companion of the sociopath Caine. At the start of this journey I hated Diana with everything I could muster within me. I thought she was an evil witch who would do anything to get her own way or allow Caine to get his. This is very much how she was for the first three to four books in the series. I despised her character and genuinely wished ill of her if there was ever a battle or an argument between her and Caine. I wished for Caine to use his mutant telekinetic powers to destroy her in some brutally horrific way that would cause her to suffer as much as the people she herself had damaged. However when she becomes pregnant and leaves Caine to live with Sam (the other main character (the good one)), I began to truly believe that maybe she had a good seed in her heart that just needed nurturing in order to flourish. It was then I began to feel bad at myself for being so hostile towards Diana and not giving her a chance to show herself for who she really was when she didn't have Caine to perform for twenty four hours a day. I thought the way the Grant lures you into thinking to that you can trust her and that she is a changed woman, is very clever. He appeals to the human nature of his readers. It doesn't matter that you hated her before and that you wanted her dead, now she is pregnant and our own human instinct is to look after and care for this person so that they don't die and the don't get hurt; just by changing one element of Diana's situation, Grant has cleverly turned our opinion of her on it's head.

Later on in the story though, when Diana gives birth to her child, the baby is taken over by the Gaiaphage which takes the baby to use as its own body. Understandably Diana follows that dark and evil creature, following her newly found mothering instincts to look after what she believes is still her baby girl. Even though as a reader I understood that Diana couldn't possibly tear herself away from her child, I still felt deeply hurt and disappointed in Diana  that she had turned and followed the Evil one. I really felt like I'd been let down, as if I'd put my trust in a close friend and they had turned they're back on me. This really knocked my opinion of Diana for the rest of the story and even right at the end when Sam and Astrid (his girlfriend) offer hospitality to Diana, I still felt unsure of her however, because Sam had been the leader and the hero from the beginning I felt obliged to trust his judgement and not to question his decisions as after all, they were the reason so many people had survived the FAYZ.

This deep connection that I built with many of the characters, lead me to start thinking in the same way as the children trapped beneath the barrier. At the start I desperately wanted them to escape so they could be with their parents again, but as the story progressed and I journeyed with the characters, I almost became adverse to the idea of the of the FAYZ wall coming down. The young people had learnt to build a society on their own and I as a reader had been there with them while they had committed atrocities that would appear outrageous and worthy of various prison sentences to the outside world, however being there with them, I understood that these children had no other choice and that the majority of them only did what they had to in order to survive. I wanted the wall to come down only because no one would survive very long unless it did. I was scared for the young people because I knew the outside world would not understand what had happened and they would try and prosecute and drag them through councelling and various therapies. The people who had survived the trauma of living in the FAYZ would not get the medals and the heroic welcome they deserved so badly.

Right at the end of the final book, after the acknowledgements, Grant wrote a short letter to his readers, thanking them for reading his books and taking the time to take the journey with Sam, Astrid, Diana, Caine and all the others. During the letter he explains that the main thing he wanted to achieve was that his readers would be able to feel for the characters and feel as if they were really there with them.

I feel that the author has achieve his goal many times over in the course of these books, and I feel that this is only emphasised by the fact that each relationship between reader and character is completely unique from any other one.

Finally I would just like to add that I would highly recommend this series to just about anyone, no matter how old you are.

This book probably should not be read by people who feel strongly against children being exposed to violent and life threatening situations.