Marvin's Bookish Blog

Both episodes one and two, which are offered free at Amazon and the author's web site, were pretty good, so I decided to spend the $4.99 for the entire season one of Yesterday's Gone consisting of all six episodes. In case you are confused why I'm saying "season" and "episodes" on Goodreads and not Netflix, it should be noticed that despite the TV vocabulary, Yesterday's Gone is a serial novel that is influenced by TV series like Lost but more so by the serial novels like King's The Green Mile, or even more like King's not-so-serial The Stand of which it has some very loose similarities.

It was $4.99 well spent. Platt and Wright have concocted a very imaginative post-apocalyptic tale that has plenty of interesting characters and lots of bizarre and scary happenings. The only problem is that it is easy to lose tracks of all of the characters. I would suggest making a list to remind you who's who. The one I never have trouble remembering is Boricio, who may be the worlds' most interesting serial killer (Sorry, Dexter). The novel reads fast and furious with some interesting turns throughout. The authors use a ton of cliffhangers with one in almost every chapter and episodes but leaves the reader with a real "WTF" moment at the end.

So why four stars and not five? Nothing except my own critical bias. Yesterday's Gone is basically a summer read or, to use the authors' own TV parlance, a prime time series. There is no heavy message here and no real insight into humanity....no Kurtz's "The Horror, The Horror!" moment...at least not yet. This is pure escapism...nothing wrong with that either. But I also am not really sure where this serial novel is headed. There are so many loose ends it can go anywhere at anytime. Since there are lots of "Lost" similarities, the author might do well to heed the mistakes of Lost's season three where they "lost" viewers because there appeared to be no ending in sight.

But this is only season one and the roller coaster has just started. Maybe I'm being too harsh. OK. Four-and-a half stars.

Not to mention, I've buying Season Two.