Published: 2009
Pages: 583
Genre: Young Adult/Dystopian
I did not care for this book. There's a fine line between interesting plot twists and "WTF did I just read??". The storyline seems simple at first: In a small Californian town, suddenly everyone over the age of fifteen disappears. Sounds cool, right? Then it starts to seem like a YA version of Stephen King's Under the Dome (which I really liked) when the kids figure out that there is a weird barrier around the town. Okay...still not too bad.
THEN...the kids start developing weird powers. I can also deal with that, although I was expecting more of a straight-forward dystopian novel.
But then the wolves start talking. We have snakes that fly. Some weird entity called "the Darkness" that lives in an old mineshaft. WHAT. THE. EFF? It just got too freaking weird for me. Not to mention the most anti-climactic ending ever. Most of the book was leading up to this big confrontation between the "good" kid and the "bad" kid (who were twins that were separated at birth by the way). Then they BARELY fight and just kind of walk away from each other.
I also didn't care for the characters. I thought they were too cliche (and I wanted to murder the stupid sidekick surfer friend who attached the word "brah" to the end of every sentence). The good guy (Sam) was TOO good and the bad kid (Caine) was too maniacal to even believe (remember, he's FOURTEEN). Everyone was very one-note. The super smart girl, the autistic kid, etc. -- that is basically their entire personality.
I will NOT be reading the rest of this series unless I feel that I deserve some sort of punishment.
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