Gone Series - Book Order
I’ll start with Michael Grant’s Gone Series that got me back into reading in recent years. I cannot recommend this series highly enough.
My cousin shared with me one Christmas a few years ago the first book in the Gone Series. Being GONE.
I went back to my cousin after a couple of weeks in hope that he had the next book in the series. Thankfully he gave me the next two books in the series. I absolutely smashed through these books, and continued to get through them.
The Gone series starts off in a small town named Perdido Beach where a sudden event causes anyone over the age of 15 to suddenly vanish, and Perdido beach and surrounds is covered by a Dome. With all of the adults suddenly GONE, the children and teenagers need to learn to survive by themselves, and within the Dome.
This post apocalyptic scenario spans 6 books and is incredibly well written to keep readers drawn in. Being post-apocalyptic in nature, some of the children and teenagers develop powers, and this sets the tone for an amazingly written book series keeping you guessing of what will happen next, and how it will happen.
I’m sure that as a teenager the majority of you at one point in time had the thought of “I don’t need my parents. I can look after myself” or “if I had super powers this is what I would do” well these books show exactly what can happen in both of those scenarios. Drawing on the what if thoughts that can cross teenage minds. After showing some of the what if’s that could be considered pretty sweet, the readers are taken on a much longer journey of the horrors that come with unchecked powers and the heightened consequences.
Monster Series - Book Order
The follow on from the Gone series brings us into the world after the Perdido Beach Dome has collapsed. This book series brings us new characters but also brings back some of the originals as well.
The monster series is set with the intent of what if the same thing that happened to the kids within perdido beach, was to occur to the entire world. Having extra terrestrial rock crash into earth, and when persons come into contact with the rock, by ingesting, or having it come into contact with your blood, they are transformed into shape shifting monsters. A bit different from the occurrences in Perdido beach, however still a really cool concept.
Similarly to the Gone Series, this follows what would happen if there are the people that are good with powers, and people that are bad with powers and what they would do. And alongside this, having the government wanting it all for themselves to create weapons.
I mentioned earlier that there is a return of old characters, and the creation of new, and unfortunately I found it hard to get into the first part of the book due to this. THere were 6 books where the main protagonist is Sam Temple, and whilst he gets a mention during the books, he is limited to merely mentions until the final couple of chapters of the final book. The main protagonists within these books are predominately 4x new characters, and the return of Sam Temples right hand woman Dekka from the original series.
Once I was past the characters and was able to delve into the character development of the new characters, and the further insight into Dekka, I was able to enjoy the books far more.
This trilogy was a good trilogy and I did enjoy reading. Just not as much as the original 6.
I found that the driving story within the Monster series didn’t reel me in as well as the Gone Series did. What I will say however is that there was maybe 1 incident in each book that I felt in a big and shocking way that was really really well done. Like edge of your seat “FARK” kind of moments.
What I did try to do with this article is give an oversight of the premise of the books and the enjoyment that I got out of the books so if you don’t want a spoiler stop reading now as I am going to give away the ending of the final book.
I did not like the edging at all. I hated the ending. Because of the ending of this book I actually put a topic in for discussion on the podcast. The book ends, with them all being in a simulation…………….. Come on… For how amazingly well written his series was, to have it all be as simple as a simulation was very disappointing. The one redeeming action to this is Michael Grant’s Epilogue. Michael Grans Epilogues highlights his journey in creating the world and he didn’t really know how he truly wanted to end the series. So he then leaves an open ending. The intent of Grant leaving the open ending was to create a sandbox so to speak, for fanfiction writers to create their own stories from here. How will fanfiction writers interest the ending, and take the story from there. I know that my mind went into several different tangents of what could be however I am not a good creative writer (let alone writer) to bring the ideas to fruition. In any case, I did hate the ending itself, but I very much enjoyed the idea of future writers being able to continue the world and story that Grant created.