Light (Gone, #6)

by Michael Grant

[clementine]

This series has been a bit up and down for me; it didn't start off terribly well, but there was something compelling about the premise to me. In general, I've found that the writing is fairly unimpressive, the characters are a bit flat but not completely devoid of any interesting traits, and the story itself is very strong.

So many YA dystopian novels these days are formulaic, predictable, and frankly quite boring. The likelihood of this increases tenfold if they're expanded into a series (which they are about 90% of the time). Michael Grant's Gone series absolutely does not suffer from this problem. All six books were interesting and fast-paced. All six had legitimately shocking plot twists. All six stood alone; none were filler.

One thing I really admire about this series is that Grant is absolutely not afraid to push the limits. These books are dark. There are some very graphic and disturbing scenes of violence, illness, torture, and other things. Like cannibalism. I really can't think of any other YA series that so consistently goes to dark places. Grant truly doesn't shy away from any of that, and I like it. It's refreshing for an author to trust his teenage audience to be able to handle darker scenes.

I think Light was a nearly perfect ending to this series. Grant's writing and attention to detail has improved steadily and noticeably since Gone. His writing style is less awkward and stilted, his dialogue more natural, his characters much more nuanced and sympathetic. Characters who were pretty much just cardboard cutouts in the first few books really became fleshed out by the end of the series. Grant managed to make certain characters who were pretty purely terrible in the first book at least mildly sympathetic by the end. Conversely, the "heroes" of the series weren't just wholesome and good. They had internal struggles and major character flaws.

The ending was realistic to me; all of the survivors of the FAYZ were damaged, and Grant did an excellent job of showing how their experience would haunt them for the rest of their lives. It was a bittersweet ending with just enough detail to be satisfying and give us closure without being too perfect, happy, or tidy.

I think my main complaint is that most of the major characters got out unscathed. Brianna's death was easily the most devastating for me, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who disagreed. Caine was obviously a major character who died, but that wasn't as emotionally difficult since he was never terribly sympathetic. I'm not saying I wanted any of our favourites to die, but it would have been a tad more realistic. I think it was fairly obvious that Sam would live, but there were a lot of other characters that could have been sacrificed for the sake of realism, and, sure, maybe an emotional response.

All in all, this was a very strong ending to a series that has really grown. I'm really pleased with how well this series turned out, and glad that I stuck with it despite my initial reservations. The writing isn't great, but the plot is, and it's definitely one of my favourite dystopian series.