Quarantine #2: The Saints by Lex Thomas (1 Star)

A cross between the Gone series and Lord of the Flies, Quarantine #2: The Saints continues this frenetically paced and scary young adult series that illustrates just how deadly high school can be.

Nothing was worse than being locked in—until they opened the door...

McKinley High has been a battle ground for eighteen months since a virus outbreak led to a military quarantine of the school. When the doors finally open, Will and Lucy will think their nightmare is finished. But they are gravely mistaken.

As a new group of teens enters the school and gains popularity, Will and Lucy join new gangs. An epic party on the quad full of real food and drinks, where kids hookup and actually interact with members of other gangs seemed to signal a new, easier existence. Soom after though, the world inside McKinley takes a startling turn for the worse, and Will and Lucy will have to fight harder than ever to survive.

I recently wrote a review for an amazing debut novel from the creative man-duo Lex Thomas, two friends who managed to craft Quarantine #1: The Loners, a book about a mutating super-virus epidemic that results in an entire high school being quarantined by the military, and what happens inside the school as a result of no adult supervision. It was fantastic, and it got a 4.75 stars from me.

Then book two, The Saints, came out, and it broke my heart. And not in a good way.

A lot of the things I loved about book one were missing in book two.

For one thing, David—the main character of The Loners—isn't there, because he "graduated," losing his immunity to the virus and thus having to leave the school.

For another, the Loners tribe from book one escapes McKinley High at the very beginning…except Will, Lucy, and about 7 or 8 other kids, thus stripping them of their strength. The Loners disband and everyone joins different tribes to stay safe. So most of the characters I got attached to in The Loners are gone after, like, page 10.

But the biggest thing is the sex and the violence. In The Loners, sure kids are having sex and killing each other in this incredibly high-stress, unsupervised environment—but it's handled tastefully and for the most part it's off-screen, as it were. We see a few kids get killed, yes, but it's not wet violence, with gratuitous description and a high ick-factor. We get more of the "oh that's terrible" emotional punch and less of the "oh, that's disgusting" reaction.

Not so in The Saints. In book two, sex is handled a lot more crudely and casually, and we get a lot more wet violence. I was actually nauseated reading the violent bits. I only finished so I could write this review.

Let me restate this so you all understand: I had the same reaction to a young adult novel as I did to watching Saw II. Yeah. The violence was that gross. Was that really necessary, Lex Thomas? Really? No, it wasn't. Come on, guys. One of the things that impressed me the most about you two was that your debut novel was tastefully done. Why must you unnecessarily step up the ick?

Another big issue I had with the plot was Sam and Hilary from book one. In book one, Sam is very much the homicidal whacked-out power-hungry dictator kid. Hilary is torn between wanting to be safe/comfortable with Sam or doing the right thing and protecting David, whom she still loves.

In book two, we lose both of these dynamics. We begin to see a more vulnerable (and also a crazier) side of Sam, and learn that his father's manipulation and emotional abuse is why he's so bat-crap crazy. We also learn about Hilary's mother's emotional abuse, which explains why she's so cruel, but we've lost the part of her that made her someone you wanted redeemed in book one—and we never find out why that happens. What changed Hilary? We don't know. David leaving? Maybe, but again, we never find out.

As for Sam, the moment his father shows him that he really loves him, that it's not all about strength and winning, Sam's like, "Okay, I'm good. I'm escaping now. Forget conquering McKinley High. I am so out of here." Which basically means he's not a threat. He doesn't need to die anymore because he wants out of McKinley, and once out of McKinley, he'll probably get shot by the military.

So why does he need to get killed by a wild pig? It's like, the moment Sam becomes even close to sympathetic, Lex Thomas got twitchy about him being less than psychotically evil and killed him off—and in a really violent, gory way. Why?

And then of course there's Gates, the new kid, the leader of the Saints (so-called because they're escapees from St. Patrick's private school down the road). We as the reader know right away that he's gonzo. It's pretty obvious. A) he's obviously bipolar and b) he just gives off the nutso-vibe. So when Will hooks up with him as his new best friend, it's like, "Ohhh, snaps."

Now Gates is a very well-done character. I actually like him as a character. I would never be friends with this guy (too much of a party animal) but he's well-written. And he's a better-done bad guy than Sam, because he has more dimensions. His type of crazy isn't so close to the surface.

But!

One new, well-done character isn't enough to balance out the problems in this book. In fact, even all the cool things in The Saints aren't enough. What good things there are—learning about the Sluts and their initiation, the surprisingly happy new lives of the former Loners, Will and Lucy finally getting together, a new and better bad guy—don't balance out the sickening amount of wet violence in the book, the tacky sex-capades (the single, very glossed-over scene between Will and Lucy and Lucy's hesitation about giving her virginity away to just anyone are the only things done tastefully here), and the sudden urge everyone has to party all the time with the new supplies they get from Sam's parents due to Gates taking Sam hostage.

Maybe the point was to show that in high-stress situations, teenagers act like wild animals, but we kind of figured that one out during The Loners, and it was shown in a much less tacky way. I don't know. I was very disappointed in this book. It seemed like the storylines involving Will and Gates were mostly full of cheap shock-events, and the only thing worth reading was Lucy's initiation and membership in the Sluts. That's less than 1/3 of the book.

There were plenty of other things that piqued my interest, but they were never followed up on: what happened to two of the Loners who were very much in love during book one, one of whom graduated; the pregnant girl we meet in the Sluts in book two, who's going to graduate in time to have her baby safely; the Freak and the Nerd who got "married" apparently in book one (we only hear about it in book two, but never see it) who graduated on the same day together. Those things are never followed up on, and I for one would've liked to see this marriage in The Loners.

And of course, they ended the book on a cliffhanger. So Gates may or may not be dead, Violent—the leader of the Sluts, who is a wonderful person—may or may not be dead, Sam is dead, Lucy is badly injured and Hilary is out to probably literally kill her, and we don't know what happens to the pregnant girl.

I hate you, Lex Thomas. Because I'm gonna have to read book 3 when it comes out (although I'll probably just skim it) so I know what happens. But I'm not buying them.

You've broken my heart with your sudden urge to jump your rating from PG to R, with your twisted descriptions of people being scalped with box-cutters and kids getting their throats torn out by wild pigs, and I've lost my faith in you guys. I don't know what happened, but your second book is a 1.5 star.

It just was so badly done, so lazy. As if you couldn't be bothered to work at getting the same effect with less blood and bare skin and profane language. I don't understand—were we, your fans, not worth trying?

Sincerely and with much sadness,

LA Knight