GONE DARK

Teenagers embark on a cross-country trip after all of North America’s electrical grids go down at once.

Readers in the mood for a strung-out series of set piece shockers and nods to the Hunger Games are in for a treat as, driven by what looks less like logic than lingering hostage syndrome, Los Angeles teen Zara Ross decides that living through the apocalyptic blackout requires traveling back to the abusive survivalist father in upstate New York who trained her to shoot a crossbow and butcher deer as a child. Seeing leadership qualities in her that may not be evident to readers, several uprooted peers tag along on a state-by-state trek with stops at a Colorado compound (that turns out not to be a safe haven) and a house in Iowa (whose resident makes an extreme request of them). Following these and other team-building adventures, the travelers finally arrive—only to discover that Zara’s dad is even more evil than earlier hints have suggested. Corpses, atrocities, and even basic foraging techniques are more alluded to than described in enough detail to make them seem real. Tellingly, there is a denouement, but minimal speculation about the catastrophe’s causes or culprits render it no more than a MacGuffin. Zara is White; her boyfriend, Gabe Ramirez, and his younger sister, Zara’s best friend Estella, are of Mexican, Honduran, and Italian ancestry.

An unvarnished addition to shelves already bulging with more credibly worked out disaster scenarios.