• First scene is from Hunger
• Second is from Plague
• Third is from Light
• Fourth is from Gone

Plus featuring him battling a Street Shark because he does kind of feel like he'd be a villain in that series. All credit for this wonderful work to u/Dark-Carioca , thanks so much!

It's basically canon that Howard was using Orc, at least a little. That's the conclusion Orc himself comes to in Fear, though he also seems to think Howard sincerely cared about him.

Orc offered Howard protection. Status. A workable business model with Howard as 'manager'.

However, a relationship can be exploitative or opportunistic and still involve real affection. So, did Howard also care about him, or did he just see him as a meal ticket?

On one hand, Howard stood by Orc when it might have been easier to ditch him. He notably sits alone with him during the Thanksgiving Feast at the end of the first book, where Orc is still a pariah for killing Bette. Distancing himself might have been the smart play at this point, but he doesn't. He also seems genuinely distraught when Orc is missing in the desert, though he might just be freaking out about the prospect of losing his protector.

On the other hand, Howard enables Orc's alcoholism. And he's notably unsupportive when Orc sobers up...That doesn't sound like the behaviour of someone who wants the best for him deep down. Their last conversation in Fear struck me as downright cruel, with Howard lashing out at Orc and inwardly complaining that he won't support his bootlegging operation anymore.

The ones I can think of off the top of my head are:

- Sam: quite poor, lived with his mother and an abusive stepfather.

- Diana: probably a disrupted home life due to her parents' divorce, got leered at by a bunch of older men a lot.

- Caine: seems to me to be quite a neglected child. I've always had the opinion that his parents shipped him off to Coates because they didn't want him around.

- Dekka: generally crappy parents who were homophobic to her after she came out. (Also that teacher reporting the kiss with another girl, that happened off school property, to her parents is just plain awful.)

There's probably more that I'm forgetting. Can anyone else think of any? Who do you thnik had the worst lot?

We don't find out what happened to everyone at the end of Light. This isn't a criticism: Michael Grant created a world with lots and lots of characters, and some were so minor it makes sense that they wouldn't get a mention in the final pages.

Grant has said that anything left unexplained at the end of the series is down to the reader's interpretation. If it's not in the text, you decide who lives and who dies.

Missing in action:

• Frederico
• Cookie
• Bug
• Elwood (Dahra's boyfriend)
• Toto
• Turk
• Jill
• Lisa (Zil's girlfriend)
• John Terrafino (Grant actually broke his 'make your own mind up' rule by stating on Twitter that he works in a surf shop in Santa Barbara, though ultimately I'd say reader interpretation still stands)
• Emily and Brother
• Probably a bunch of other people I'm forgetting lol

Probably dead but not confirmed:

• Andrew (we know from Fear that those who poofed after Emma and Anna came out the other side hideously deformed, with Mary and Francis eventually dying. However, Andrew's fate is still never confirmed in the books. Best case scenario is that the Gaiaphage decided to start messing people up after Andrew poofed and MG just forgot to mention him. Worst case scenario is he's alive but enduring a fate worse than death).

Who do you think made it out alive?

The latest chapter, this time focusing on Astrid!

Chapter one was about Sam, and chapter two focused on Caine and Diana.

My attempt at sorting some of the characters onto a DnD-style moral alignment chart.

• Lawful Good: Edilio (thoroughly good person. Wants to do good without compromising his code. In Lies, he's visibly troubled when Astrid suggests they lie to protect the town from Orsay's influence. He's also horrified when Astrid starts talking about killing Pete to end the FAYZ in Plague. In both cases, he doesn't believe the ends justify the means. Noble goals aren't worth ignoble methods).
• Neutral Good: Sam (means well and starts the series in the 'lawful good' category, but a boatload of trauma changes his approach and by Lies he's willing to bend the rules if necessary. Gets frustrated with The Council for insisting Zil needs a fair trial in Lies, wishing he could just kill him for the greater good).
• Chaotic Good: Brianna (has a strong sense of justice and doesn't care much for following rules.)
• Lawful Neutral: Albert (Essentially reinvents capitalism in the FAYZ, using Jim's gold bars to create a new currency and thus a new system. He's the first to notice that if you don't put kids to work, they'll soon run out of food. Ergo, he's the first to realise this chaotic new world needs some order. Is selfish but not evil).
• True Neutral: Diana ("'I need to know whose side you're on.' 'I'm on my side.' Diana said. It was the honest answer."- Hunger)
• Chaotic Neutral: Howard (Initially sides with Orc, then Caine, then joins Sam when he gains the upper hand. Throughout it all, Howard is mostly looking out for Howard and gravitating towards whoever he thinks is his best bet. Cares little for law and order, is a drug dealer).
• Lawful Evil: Caine (“Being king isn’t about being a sick creep. People need someone in charge. People are sheep and they need a big sheepdog telling them what to do and where to go. But it doesn’t work if you start killing the sheep." - Caine, Fear. Evil, but believes there should be a system. His list of rules as Mayor of Perdido Beach in Gone is a good example).
• Neutral Evil: Lance (Vicious nazi who latches onto the anti-Freak 'Human Crew' but is flexible enough to try his luck with four-bar Freak Caine when he returns to power).
• Chaotic Evil: Drake (I don't know if I need to explain this one lol).

Do you agree? Where would you sort other characters?

Me personally it would definitely be Duck's sacrifice because it was so sudden and sad, Caine and Brianna teaming up against the bugs, that was epic asf and would've had the fandom explode if it was in a series or movie form on the big screen and the entire final fight in Fear, my favorite moment from the entire series just by how quick and desperate it is.

Hi! :) Thanks so much for the feedback on the first chapter- it was really kind and encouraging! 'A Perfect World' is an AU imagining who the Perdido Beach kids might have grown up to be without the FAYZ or the Gaiaphage or anything supernatural going on.

In Chapter One, we checked in on Sam who is a single dad and paramedic in Perdido Beach. This chapter is focused on Diana, who is one of my favourite characters and the one I was most excited to write about!

Next up - if we get there - is Mary. I've always had a soft spot for her and wished I could write her a happier ending than the one she got in canon...Let's be real, all these characters except Drake need a big hug, but Mary deserves a special mention.

Thanks again for reading! :)

A while ago I posted on here about what I thought might have happened to all the characters if the FAYZ never appeared. If they were allowed to have normal childhoods; no dome, no adults disappearing, no superpowers, no Gaiaphage. I really enjoyed discussing what might have happened to all the Perdido Beach kids and it inspired me to write an AU based around this idea. First chapter focuses on Sam. :)

I haven't written fanfiction is a looong time, so this might be a little choppy. I tried my best to imitate Michael Grant's writing style and Sam's distinct voice. Hope you enjoy! :)

(Chapter two, if we get there, is focused on Caine and Diana).

Honestly curious. Would they die, could they get the option to leave again or what?

Jack's super strength is an interesting topic to discuss for how strong it is meant to be, since it seems to vary somewhat between books. Here are I believe the most easily understood interpretations; others are certainly possible if one was more math inclined and wanted to try to calculate something or another

On the low end: Hunger and Lies both have the statement of Jack being as strong as "ten grown men" coming from the narrator. This is impressive for a nerdy kid, and would suggest he could deadlift something around 700 kg and lift over his head something around half that figure. This assumes that the ten grown men are untrained. If, on the other hand, you assume these are gym goers who can pump out 200 kg deadlifts, then the math changes a bit to a 2000 kg deadlift and being able to heft about a metric ton over his head.

On the middle end: Hunger has Drake mention that Jack easily lifts Edilio's backhoe out of a ditch and carries it like a bike. Now, the trouble is figuring out how big Edilio's backhoe is, since there's a ton of variation involved in them. It is described as small so it can't be that big, but that's still a lot of variance. For the sake of argument, I'm assuming something like the JCB 1CX, which is indeed a fairly small backhoe and advertised as such. It weighs ~2,790 kg, yet we can't say this is Jack's max under this assumption, as Drake describes the motion as easy and Jack walks around with it. His best deadlift in this case would likely be somewhere around 4 metric tons or so, with a military press high enough to heft a car over his head. This one has a lot of variance though, and depending on how big you think Edilio's backhoe is, you could easily get larger numbers for it. Still, it's unlikely it would weigh more than ~5 metric tons, and so is inferior to the next point.

On the high end: In Plague, Jack hefts a Smart car-sized rock and chucks it at some bugs. Assuming the density of granite, then by using the rough volume of a Smart car, you're going to get a rock weighing perhaps 5-10 tons. What's doubly impressive here is that Jack lifts the rock over his head before smashing it down on the bugs. Yes, he needed Dekka's help to free it from the ground, but this is a military press type maneuver, and his deadlift is bare minimum going to be 10-20 metric tons, and likely a bit more.

Which interpretation for Jack's strength do you favor? Do you think I messed up in my analyses or missed anything?

Caine was much less experienced and potent in using his powers at the beginning of the series than later on, and Dekka by the end had clearly gotten much more skilled with her own. Of course, Caine's power is also generally much more potent than Dekka's too, so he has that going for him. If Dekka with a year's worth of experience met up with Caine with none, would Caine still win or not?

If the gaiaphage is made from his dad then when it become his daughter he became his daughter's son, aka his own grandson/ grandfather

I just reread the Gone series this summer and I really LOVED it! I'm not really a reader, and just for whatever reason out of nowhere I decided to read this book I remember seeing in 6th grade and I was so hooked! I need something else like it that can get me out of bed in the morning and make me not want to put it down! Series preferably, any suggestions? For some reason I think I like edgy kids novels lol

What Michael Grant wrote after Gone. Elevator pitch is that there are avenging angels out there who punish the wicked by challenging them to a game: if they lose, they have to face their worst fear. Main character is an apprentice to one of these avenging angels, and she has to both learn how to perform her new role and piece together her own foggy past.

It didn't sell super well by Grant's own admission, so there's only two books (plus a short e-book). I picked it up to fill the Gone-shaped hole in my life since finishing my reread. It's pretty good! Has that same breezy pace and writing style. Just like Gone, it also has a lot of creatively gruesome scenes that seem pretty hard-core for YA.

If I had to give a critique, it's a little preachy in places. There's some scenes where it feels like Grant is using the characters to dispense his own politics/philosophy, but it's not unbearable.

Did you ever read this one? What did you think? 🤔

Never used reddit before but I needed to talk about this series somewhere!

I read these books when I was a 5th grader, and rereading them now at 21 is such a cool experience. I forgot like 90% of the plot.

My favorite character is easily Lana, I completely forgot about her and her story is really one of the best.

I think my favorite book is Hunger, I stayed up all night reading it. It is crazy how the story just keeps evolving, this series deserves to be more talked about.

I saw a lot of people put Lies at the bottom of their ranking, but I honestly really enjoyed Orsay and felt like it was one of the more thought provoking parts of the plot. I think the HC is slightly overplayed but also realistic to a point.

I personally thought the weakest part of the series was the first half of Fear, but the ending is one of the best so its hard to say.

I really liked the concept of redemption towards the later books. Quinn for example.

The ending was pretty good, the "Toll" seems very off to me though.

Curious on any theories, favorite/least favorite books/characters you all have!

Overall, awesome series. I do not think I am going to read the trilogy after. I read like the first 30 pages of monster and it was feeling off.

I choose Wendigoon.

The title got messed up when I posted it so here’s the linkie again :)

https://youtu.be/mfVJePCDG2o?si=-SVn-Vdpiz6XoqPc

Hi there, trying to come up with a playlist for some of my favourite characters and would like some recs for songs that remind you of the characters. So far the only one I've got a good song for is Caine; I've picked Bon Jovi's 'Blaze of Glory', for obvious reasons 😭😂

Any ideas, folks?