First published in the USA 2009 by HarperTeen
First published in Great Britain 2010 by Egmont UK Limited
Nutshell blurb: The adults have all disappeared leaving everyone under the age of 15 behind. The kids who survived the first book now face a food shortage. They also have to contend with the fact that some of them are developing strange powers.
This is the second book in this series (you can read my thoughts on the first one here).
The first book deals with the fact that everyone over the age of 15 had disappeared leaving kids behind in a small town in California. Being kids with no adult supervision, they made the mistake of not planning ahead with their food. They ate all of the candy/ice cream/junk food and let a lot of fruit/vegetables/meat go to waste.
In this book, those consequences kick in as they now have to ration what they have left. The kids that are left are separated into two factions; those who live in Perdido Beach and those who live in Coates Academy. These factions do not get along and are being broken down further into kids who have strange mutant powers against those who don’t. Throw a nuclear power plant and some mutating animals/insects into the mix and you’ve got a really exciting story filled with peril and action.
This series is YA and it recommends that the reader be 12+ due to “scenes of cruelty and some violence” but that doesn’t mean that it’s a light and comfortable story for adults. These kids deal with some heavy problems, only without the benefit of adult supervision.
One of the problems is that the town is being run by a 15 year old. He’s managing over 100 kids who have no discipline and no desire to harvest food that is growing in the surrounding area. Some of the kids get into alcohol or drugs and one of the girls has an eating disorder even though they are on the verge of starvation.
This book also comes closer to explaining why it all started.
I love this series. As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I find it fascinating to imagine how people would survive in a post-apocalyptic world with limited resources. It’s especially interesting to imagine how kids would survive. In this book, they don’t always make the right decisions (even the main characters) but they do the best they can. Some of them try to do things to give their world some semblance of normality, such as creating currency.
There is a lot of action and even though it’s YA, Mr. Grant doesn’t pull punches. People get hurt. People die. There are lynchings. The only real defining characteristics that make it YA to me are the fact that there is no sex and no swearing.
It’s a fantastic series (so far) and I’ll be getting the third book the next time I go to the library.
If you’ve read these books, I’d love to know what you think. (No spoilers, please!)
Storytime with Buffy 
Sorry to be flippant, but do the kids who have powers go live at the academy? À la Xavier’s Academy for the gifted? 😛
Nope, the powers are spread out between all of the kids who are left behind. The significance of the academy is that it’s for troubled kids who’ve misbehaved and gotten expelled from previous schools. So, while they’re not all bad kids, it does add an element of tension among the population. It makes for a pretty interesting dynamic.
Sounds like Lord of the Flies…with mutants.
On the book jacket it says something like ‘If Stephen King wrote Lord of the Flies…”
I’d say that’s fairly accurate.
Sounds like a fun read. I remember reading a book back in Junior High (so we’re talking early 90s) called The Girl Who Owned a City – same basic principal – but minus the mutants. It’s a fun idea to play with – might check it out.
It was very fun and even though it is a YA book, it didn’t feel childish. I’d love to know what you think of it if you decide to read it.
I’ve been debating reading this series. Looks like I’ll have to check it out! 🙂
I’m really enjoying it. Give it a try and let me know what you think. 🙂
[…] This is the 3rd in the series by Michael Grant and I’m still really enjoying them. Since this is the third in the series, I’m not sure how spoilerific this post is going to be but please be advised that I will divulge a bit of information (at least from the previous books). It would be impossible to talk about this book without doing so. If you would like to know what I thought about the two previous books in the series, please see my posts for Gone and Hunger. […]