Light (by Michael Grant)

It seems the cat is suffering from Gone fatigue…  Leaving a year between installments just didn’t seem like such a good idea. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I still finished this book is record time, but it was more of a “let’s see how this ends and we’re over and done with it” kind of thing, than a “Wow, what a great and earth-shattering conclusion this really is!”

If you’ve made it till Fear – the previous book – you’re obviously going to read Light, so it’s not as if Michael Grant will lose any readers because of this book, but I doubt he’ll make any new fans either. Somehow the fights, the explosions, the violence… all of it doesn’t seem as grand anymore as in some of the previous books. The utter evil that Penny seemed to be in Fear, for instance, is somehow lost now. The only real “villain” is Gaia – the gaiaphage – but (and I blame this on Gone fatigue – she (or it) s no longer as convincingly bad as she was for instance when Caine or Lana were under its spell. Now that the gaiaphage is ‘out in the open’, so to speak, the evil that comes from her seems…expected, and her wanting to kill all and everything just for the sake of it, without any other obvious plans for what comes after… well it’s a mute sort of evilness.

Also, all the fights and near misses are just that: another fight, and another explosion, and people are just running around from Perdido Beach to wherever the gaiaphage might be next and then they fight some more, and run some more, and… you know, what was once über-electrifying (“wow, he/she fights like that, how neat is that!” or “you have got to be kidding me, killer mutant worms?????” and edge-of-your-seat excitement , is now almost normal (even the fact that some beloved characters die!) and yes, I hesitate to say it… a chore to get through until you get to the end game.

And actually, when you think about the end game and the ultimate fight… for a lot of these characters there was no conclusion, and as a result this whole last book even seemed anti-climactic, which is a weird feeling to have when your main villain is defeated, right?

Oh, one final note. The cat bought Light in a Waterstones store in Canterbury (England). Waterstones apparently got a bunch of signed books. So yeah!

Bzrk (by Michael Grant)

A new Michael Grant should be something to look forward to. You know you’re in for no nonsense action, pace at superspeed and a bunch of tough no holding back heroes and/or heroines. And yes, BZRK does deliver on those fronts… and yet… it falls completely flat and is, yes, I’m saying it: dull.

First of all, BZRK is “typical” Michael Grant and I mean this in both the good and the bad way. BZRK is full of action, the type of sci-fi novel with an idea so completely whack that its only option is to focus on the action, rather than the characters. In terms of what is good, that is about it, though. It’s a fairly original concept: nanobots & biots are employed to wage a war “down in the meat”… and that is to be taken literal, as BZRK introduces us to a war that is waged ‘in the body’, a war about “mind control”. A bio-techno-war waged so humanity can be in control of its own mind again, so we are led to believe. Yes, it sounds completely out of your mind, pardon the pun. Obviously, what is needed here is a very visual sort of writing, which in a way you get (lots of descriptions of the hows). But here’s the kink: all of that makes the book boring and all of this is why this will work better as a movie or “a real visual experience”, than an experience on a piece of paper… Which also brings me to the bad…

Structurally, BZRK is a mess. It’s just all over the place and it’s hardly ever clear when we ‘switch sides’ or who does what for what reason. Motivations are not made clear at all. But where Michael Grant lost me completely was with the characters. Truth be told, some of this is also noticeable in the Gone series, but for some reason the story there is compelling enough that you can forgive the flaw… Here on the other hand, the lack of character development can’t be hidden with a convincing story.  Just like in Gone, Grant introduces a character, makes us care for it for like 10 pages then kills them off. I have to say that I probably stopped caring about “the characters” as a whole when the plane crashed and the 2 McClures died… Because the actual protagonists Sadie McClure (aka Plath) and Noah (aka Keats), well they are just boring as hell and are just a means to an end, the end being the bio-techy war stuff and proving a sci-fi point about the link between ‘our exposed bodies’, ‘technology’, and ‘mind control’.

BZRK was a disappointment, no two ways about it. Maybe it’s because sci-fi is not really my stuff, or maybe it’s because this book is both structurally and character-wise totally underdeveloped. What I am sure of though, is that the cat will gladly stick to Gone.

Fear (by Michael Grant)

Anyone who’s made it this far with Michael Grant’s Gone series will not be surprised nor disappointed with the 5th (and penultimate!) book in the series. Grant yet again delivers his trademark stylistic story-telling elements: alternately focusing on major and minor characters, displaying the strengths and weaknesses of each, while submitting them to some of the most terrifying of events. As such he is able to come up with another blood-pumping, nerve-wrecking, heart-stopping thrill of a ride, with a pleiad of mutant or otherwise gifted characters until finally everything comes together in the hallmark climax of the book, and what a climax it is this time!

In many ways Fear is no different from any of the other Gone books. Freaks and geeks? Check! Fights and battles? Check! Strife and conflict? Check! However, there are definitely a few ways in which this book is at least slightly working towards the end game, and for the very first time maybe, it is obvious how much of a mindfuck life in the FAYZ has been to the protagonists.

For one (and maybe finally!), some of the major characters seem to be showing significant changes in their ways of thinking about themselves and their role in the FAYZ. The most obvious character here is Astrid. Though she never had any real mutant powers, Astrid had always been this proud – even snotty and arrogant – character, who wasn’t just the brain of the bunch, but also the goody-two-shoes conscious of the “good guys”. In Fear we learn that her experience with Little Pete at the end of Plague has changed her so much that for the first time she has lost confidence in her motivations as being morally right… Astrid, on the other hand, is also the first character to realize that in what they are experiencing, what she has done is just what had to be done, and morally right or wrong – her biggest fear was always to do the morally wrong thing – is not applicable, and she is consequently the first one to overcome her fear.

Sam also – who is literally afraid of the dark, the worst fear to have when the FAYZ is changing, and everything is getting darker and darker – is facing some truths about his role in the FAYZ. But the same is true for all of the major players in the FAYZ: Caine, Dekka, Quinn, Diana…  And to make matters even more gruesome, it seems that Michael Grant has upped the ante when it comes to his evil  characters… not wanting to spoil anything here, but Penny is one crazy psychotic bitch! Also, Fear, even more than any of the other books, is not for the faint of heart with a few brutal deaths that will definitely shock the high-and-mighty Meghan Cox Gurdons out there (something involving coyotes and toddlers).

If there is any criticism at all about this book, then it is probably this: yes the shock-meter is almost through the roof, but that’s not always in the service of advancing the story (Michael Grant really doesn’t hold back, I’ll give him that!). And even though there are definite differences between this and the previous books, and even though most of the characters have indeed grown as characters, it is indeed about high time that Grant comes with a conclusion to the whole series. It is nice that he let us see what is outside the FAYZ, but maybe he could also have focused more on that aspect of the storyline, than on yet again a new character that will either kick the bucket a few pages later, or will turn out to play no role whatsoever anyway. Also, Diana’s superspeed-growing baby? :::insert big sigh::: Did you really have to go all Twilight on us here?

Anyway, don’t let me spoil your fun, because despite these minor foils, Fear is still up there with the best of dystopia books, and if brutal, sadistic, evil, mutant powers meets fantastic, gasp-worthy, unbelievable adventures is your thing, I wonder why you haven’t started reading the whole Gone series yet??

Plague (by Michael Grant)

OK, the cat’s got a major problem here… 2012? Seriously? That’s how long we have to wait till the next Gone installment? In a previous review the cat already said how these books read like a train, so having your audience wait that long just seems cruel, but obviously a very good marketing strategy. I mean, anyone reading Plague will not be new to the series, so waiting they will, eagerly, excitedly, …  in the mean time, they’ll infect others who will pick up the first part and work their way up to Plague and who will be excited till Fear comes out in 2012. That’s definitely how you create and confirm the hype! There will be other book release countdowns, YouTube trailer teasers, maybe even Gone-a-thons…

As for Plague itself, what do we get? Well, obviously more of the same. The freak-o-meter still has readings that are off the chart. I wonder how Michael Grant creates his universe of characters? Does he sit down at his desk, white paper in front of him, black crayon in his hand and then start to draw some of the mutations of these kids to see how they play visually? Like, hmmm..I wonder what could be next? I know, maybe we could have one character with a whiphand shapeshift into another character, I wonder what that would look like? Or, what if we had kids with big-mouthed bugs growing out of their shoulders?  Or maybe we could have some of them cough up their lungs, like literally…?  Visualize that!

But of course, there’s more than the freak-fest here, by now we know that Astrid’s brother Little Pete is strongly connected to the existence of the FAYZ. Drake and Brittney who emerged as one creature at the end of Lies, still share a body, and especially Drake will try to wreak havoc. At the same time, there’s a bunch of kids who are dealing with the “Plague” of the title. In Lies some kids already displayed certain flu-symptoms, but given the fact that the kids have renamed it to SDC – Supernatural Death Cough – it’s clear that this is not your regular type of flu.  On top of that there’s another group of FAYZ kids that gets to deal with an infection of flesh-eating parasites. Friends and foes will have to join forces to battle these plagues…

Lies (by Michael Grant)

What Numbers lacked in excitement and suspense, Lies, the 3^rd installment in Michael Grant’s Gone series, has in bucketloads. Undoubtedly, anyone reading this book will not be new to the series, and already knows what to expect. They will not be disappointed: action, fire, freaks and normals. Once again, it’s all there.

The initial idea of the Gone series is reminiscent of such classics as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Stephen King’s The Stand. In this case: what happens to kids when they are thrown together in a bubble of horrors and are forced to be completely self-sufficient? Will they show sympathy towards each other? Will they help each other? Will they fight amongst each other? Will everything turn to complete chaos or will certain rules be put in place and will we see a society based on certain norms and values? Add to that a supernatural component (‘Humans’ vs ‘Freaks’) and you have a potential explosive mix. And exploding it does… a lot.