To be honest, I feel that this series may have peaked with “Lies.” While “Plague” is an excellent follow-up, it feels more like a maintainer than an innovator, keeping the quality of the story steady instead of enhancing it. Rather than significantly improving upon the aspects of its predecessors, as the last two books have done, this installment keeps the status quo.
A much thinner read than its predecessors, Grant’s third offering packs so much excellence into every page that any possibility of the shorter length being a hindrance to the storytelling is crushed within the first few chapters. It may not be long, but it’s a damn good story.
Thankfully, however, “Gone” manages to be just about as good as I remember. Sure, there are some things that irk me, and they had enough of a presence in my reading experience that I was forced to give this one a relatively mediocre score, rather than the perfect five stars that I had hoped to bestow. But what Grant does right far outshines the little issues, and that makes this book worthwhile, despite its flaws.