Fear (Gone, #5)

by Michael Grant

[clementine]

4 generous stars for what I consider to be the best book in this series so far. As with the last book, the writing itself seems to have improved from the first few. Grant still relied quite a bit on telling, but the language was less annoyingly casual and some of the descriptions were pretty evocative.

The plot of this one was great; as usual, it was constantly exciting and horrifying. We seem to have reached the climax of the series, where everything is coming to a head. I assume that Light will be the last book and that they'll get out of the dome, but Grant throws enough curve balls our way - and has left us with enough of a cliffhanger - that I wouldn't say that with absolute certainty.

I was impressed with how Grant seemed to be toying more with various themes, and reasonably successfully. Fear was obviously a central theme of the book, and I thought it was handled really well - it was more subtle than the way he handles some of the other themes that are alluded to in the titles. I liked that the fear was present in every character, including the Gaiaphage, and how it was shown to manifest itself differently. There was also a running theme of misogyny which I thought was pretty effective, if a bit shallow.

Character development also picked up here. In the past I've found it hard to care about any of the characters because they seem so flat and archetypal. I still wouldn't call them robust, but I think their changes became really evident in this book. Diana in particular is very different, and I found myself really liking and sympathizing with her. Even Caine went through some changes, even within the course of the book. It bothered me that Grant seemed to find the need to smack you in the face with this and spell it out explicitly - he mentioned Quinn's development multiple times, when merely showing it would have been more effective.

There was some predictability to Fear, but I thought it was a really solid book. The plot was well-developed and well-structured and I thought Grant's writing really improved. I do think I'm being a bit generous with the rating since it's still not a great book, but I was impressed with it and enjoyed reading it quite a bit.