David Wright

Sean Platt

Season Five

Yesterday's Gone

Justin Jerome Price

Serialized Writing at its finest

Now I must admit that normally I am not a fan of stories that tend to follow multiple characters through their perspectives. It is not that I have not enjoyed such stories in the past, but generally I find that they tend to be unfocused with either poor character development or poor storyline development due to juggling many characters and side stories, thus leaving the story feeling rushed.

This story manages to avoid many of those pitfalls. Many of the characters they focus on in the book do feel like actual thought and depth were given to them, with the narration being colored by the character that they are following. And thus when the story shifts from how one character sees an event to how another character sees that same event, it leads to revelations that actually make sense. I also like that the story does feel like it shifts genre a little when they focus on different characters. So for example, when it focuses on Luca, it does feel a little like a fantasy novel since Luca is a young, precocious boy. But then it focuses on someone like Ed and it shifts more towards a kind of spy thriller. But in spite of those shifts, it still is able to keep up the general sense of dread and fast paced nature that the plot needs. Especially considering that the premise of the book is generally everyone except these people have vanished from the Earth and now strange... things have begun to appear. They have to deal with them and find their loved ones. With a premise like that, it has to have a sense of dread and luckily the authors manages this just fine. 

Another thing to appreciate is that the story does not give definitive answers about what is happening. Sure, some of the characters have ideas like it being the Rapture or it being some sort of punishment from Earth for man's technological advances, or aliens. But none of them are treated as the ultimate truth. Which makes sense. People tend to try to make sense of what is happening around them all the time, especially in hardships. And given that even after the event, weird things happen, almost impossible things, seeing people try to make sense of what's happening not only gives the story a break but also informs us of their worldview. Not to mention that if the story did give definitive answers, it would undercut the dread of the story.

All in all, a great story that is just pure fun.

Yesterday's Gone Season Five

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