Quarantine #1: The Loners by Lex Thomas (4.5 Stars)

 

It was just another ordinary day at McKinley High—until a massive explosion devastated the school. When loner David Thorpe tried to help his English teacher to safety, the teacher convulsed and died right in front of him. And that was just the beginning.

A year later, McKinley has descended into chaos. All the students are infected with a virus that makes them deadly to adults. The school is under military quarantine. The teachers are gone. Violent gangs have formed based on high school social cliques. Without a gang, you’re as good as dead. And David has no gang. It’s just him and his little brother, Will, against the whole school.

In this frighteningly dark and captivating novel, Lex Thomas locks readers inside a school where kids don’t fight to be popular, they fight to stay alive.

Welcome back, peoples! It's a new week of a new month of a new year! And I've got lots of book reviews for you all! Whoo-hoo!

Now, I actually read this book last year around November I think, but I was so busy working on I Hear the Bones Singing and Garnet and Darkness There, and Nothing... that I didn't have time to sit down and write a review for it. I love this book sooo much! Unfortunately, the sequel was a big disappointment and I'm a little annoyed at the writing team of Lex Thomas, but we'll get to that. The first book was phenomenal! What book am I talking about?

Quarantine #1: The Loners, by Lex Thomas! Now Lex Thomas is actually a pair of guys writing together, which is cool in and of itself. You don't see too many dudes writing for the young adult market. I can think of maybe ten or twenty, tops, and most of them are either working with a female author or have been writing for a looong time, like RL Stine or Bruce Coville. So it's nice to see a new male YA author out there, much less two of them.

Basic overview of the awesomeness of this book:

— realistic and (mostly) likeable male leads, which I don't see as often as I'd like unless they're paired up with a girl

* not that those are bad, but I'd like to see male leads stand alone the way a lot of female leads do; rare examples of this are SJ Kincaid's Insignia, Ender's Game, Harry Potter, and  The Vicious Deep by Zoraida Cordova

— a very complex and pretty scary (but also believable and easy-to-follow) world

— well-fleshed out, believable secondary and even tertiary characters

— well-executed but realistic violence

— and a lack of copious, gratuitous anything.

Well done, Lex Thomas, on your debut novel!

So this book has one of the scariest concepts that I, as a teenager, probably ever considered in my live ever—being stuck at school for days and days, weeks, even months, with no adult supervision whatsoever!

In The Loners, a mutating super-virus infected a group of kids in this relatively small town, and when the government tried to help treat it, the virus mutated even faster, mutated even worse, and started killing people literally in mere minutes. Even worse? A kid got away and infected the entire town, and the townspeople managed to infect the country (and probably the world, given how people travel these days). So basically the world's populace is under fire from this incurable virus that kills everyone who catches it…except…

There's one exception: teenagers. Kids who've hit puberty but haven't finished with the majority of it yet carried the virus. It didn't affect them, except to make their hair fall out upon first contracting it. Now, technically anyone under twenty or twenty-one should have been safe, since your body doesn’t really stop changing until about then, but it's such a tiny piece of "wait a minute" that I didn’t even care when I realized that. But that's also how the virus managed to spread, too.

When the virus hits, the people immediately affected in-text (aka onscreen; what we, the audience, are seeing) are the staff and students of McKinley High School. The government immediately puts them on lockdown—or as immediately as possible—to prevent them from spreading the virus, but this is after all of their teachers die.

So we've got about a thousand, fifteen-hundred teenagers in a dangerous situation, no contact from their families, a bunch of dead adults, and the only people who can help them are the government/military guys in charge of their quarantine, who warn them that if they try to escape, they will be immediately shot. Way to inspire confidence, huh? But sadly necessary.

So what does everyone do? During the first few weeks, when kids are getting attacked and going crazy and panicking and whatnot, they form tribes based on their different cliques:

— Varsity: headed by Sam, the varsity quarterback, this tribe comprises every jock in the school, football or basketball or soccer or lacrosse. Their HQ is in the gym, which they share with the Pretty Ones. Every member of Varsity dyes his hair yellow*.

* Quick side-note: a side-effect of contracting the virus for a teen is that their hair falls out, and when it grows back, it grows in white. Not platinum blond, but white, like an old person's, no matter your race.

— Pretty Ones: their leader is Hilary, captain of the varsity cheer squad. All the prettiest and most popular girls are part of this group, and they're protected by Varsity. In return, Pretty Ones are expected to "play nice" with Varsity guys. Anyone who upsets Hilary, Sam, or a member of Varsity can be kicked out.

Pretty Ones also have yellow hair. They make cosmetics and wigs (their suppliers are very "black market," as it were) for the weekly Market held in the main hall of the school.

One of the three main (but really mostly-secondary as of book one) characters, Lucy, is a former Pretty One who refused to let a drunken Varsity boy rape her.

— Nerds: all the smart kids, their headquarters are in the library. People go to the Nerds when they need help with electrical equipment like cell phones or iPods, for essentials like batteries, for books, or for medical attention.

— Geeks: the kids in band, drama, or other fine arts classes. You'd think they'd have no skills of value, but a lot of them can make or mend clothing, make cosmetics, make jewelry, things like that. On top of that, the Geeks give a performance every week in the auditorium, which is considered a neutral zone. When your life sucks, escapism is sometimes the only way to stay sane.

— Skaters: the Skaters are exactly what their name implies. However, they're also expert builders who can make things from beds to drawers to weapons, using a lot of the debris from their wrecked school (like desks). The Skaters also teach themselves self-defense and battle tactics using skateboarding maneuvers and surprisingly effective teamwork.

— Sluts: contrary to their name, the Sluts are not the skanks of the school—they're the Amazon warrior women. Instead of skimpy outfits, they wear homemade armor. Their leader, Violent (formerly known as Violet), often wears stripped and duct-taped shoulder-pads spiked with pencils, as an example.

Other than Varsity and the Pretty Ones, we know the most about the Sluts, but only as of book two. Slut Initiation is known as Naked Week, when a girl is stripped of her clothes (in the safety of Slut HQ, the cafeteria, where no one is allowed in—so no one but other girls ever sees the naked girl) and ordered around and bullied by the other girls until she fights back. The minute she shows even a little defiance, initiation ends and she becomes a member of the tribe.

At first I didn’t like this much, but in book two you see Naked Week both from the point of view of an initiate and the POV of the other Sluts. I was surprised to learn that all the girls watching the initiate were saying things like, "Come on. You can do it. You're strong. You can do it. Fight back." The initiate didn’t hear anything, but it impressed me. And the moment an initiate defies the group, all the girls start cheering and hugging her.

Only one demographic can enter the Sluts without going through Naked Week: pregnant girls. The Sluts offer them immediate and thorough protection from the rest of the school, another thing I like.

Sluts are the fighters at McKinley High, and they trade their skills as weapons-makers, fighters, and nurses at the weekly school Market, as well as essential items delivered during the government-ordered supply-drops like sanitary napkins, new clothes, and medical supplies. All Sluts dye their hair bright red with things like markers and colored printer cartridges.

— Freaks: the name pretty much says it all. It's never really clarified as to what makes a Freak a Freak, except their blue hair (dyed using those blue cleaner-cake things in toilets, ewww!) but they're the ones to go to if you want something hard to get because apparently they can get anything. However, you're most likely to run into crazy kids or drug addicts in this tribe.

— Scraps: the lowest of the low, these outsiders belong to no tribe, and exist on the fringes of the school's current society. While there are more of these than any one other group, they're "scattered, divided, leaderless" (to quote Lord Elrond).

Lex Thomas accurately and realistically portrays the lives of two brothers, senior David and freshman Will (who has epilepsy and doesn't have inexhaustible medication, as if things couldn’t get any worse) trapped in McKinley the day after David ticked off and alienated the entire varsity football team by attacking Sam, the quarterback. He had a good reason—Sam, who claimed to be his best friend, was screwing around with David's girlfriend, Hilary, captain of the cheerleading squad, behind David's back—but the timing is obviously terrible.

David and Will survive by camping out in an abandoned elevator (the school's huge, by the way; they have an underground pool for the swim-team, for crying out loud!) and doing something necessary but kind of sucky—David is a laundryman. He cleans clothes for anyone who'll pay him using a variety of tools he made himself in an abandoned bathroom (I'm a wimp, I know, but ewww! I can't even…).

Will, the ungrateful wretch, refuses to learn how to do it, too, even though once David hits about eighteen, he'll be processed by the military and leave the school and Will is going to be on his own. And cruel as it is, none of the other tribes are going to want an epileptic kid in with them, because his seizures unfortunately make him a liability during the often violent supply-drops. However, the thing I love about Will is that although he makes a lot of dumb decisions and can be a real jerk sometimes, he never does anything unforgiveable, never betrays anyone, and never abandons David. Even though he needs an attitude adjustment, he always stands by the people most important to him. And the one time he isn't there to help David, he makes up for it by being there whenever David needs him after that.

I don’t really need to go into the main plot here, like I do with most books, because I don't have any problems with it. The things that happen are realistic and make sense. I don't want to deck any of the characters. Their characterization is both very real and in-keeping with what we see of them at all times; they never do things out of character. The world-building is phenomenal. I adore this book. If it wasn’t for book two, I'd want to own it. And sneaky, sneaky Lex Thomas, The Loners ends on a flipping cliffhanger! Grrr…all my soul was within me burning when I got the end of The Loners. I hope you're happy, Lex Thomas!

A few things I absolutely LOVED about this book:

— Will and David are very much boys, and they behave accordingly. When they get in this huge, huge, huge fight over a girl, they go their own ways for a couple of days (still with each other, but not really speaking or anything) until at one point Will shows up, David tries to apologize, Will punches him in the face just once, and says, "I accept your apology, and I don't want to talk about it again." As someone with a few guy-friends, I've seen them do that. Totally realistic. Not to mention kind of funny.

— The reason for the name of the book: The Loners are a tribe that comes together because of David. When Sam goes publically gunning for David, a lot of the Scraps decide they've had it, and they join up with David, who renames them the Loners (since there are still Scraps out there). With David's leadership, the Loners become the largest tribe in all of McKinley High. And even though bad things still happen to them (heck, to everyone stuck there), things get better after that.

— There's funny stuff! One of the things that bothers me about a lot of books that have come out recently is that there is no levity in them at all! I don't understand this, because you have to have goodness and light in your life in some places or you just lose your ever-loving mind. I'm tired of oppressive, unrelenting anguish and death and pain. So congrats, Lex Thomas, you succeeded in balancing realistic darkness with realistic humor. Especially considering this is your first novel, well done, gents!

All in all, I give Quarantine 1: The Loners 4.75 stars out of 5. It would be a full 5, but the whole passing-out-of-puberty thing is a bit unrealistic, since you don't stop growing and changing until you're about twenty.

I understand why it was needed, because it wouldn’t make sense for David to be at school at twenty, really, unless he flunked or something, and they needed to give him a reason to "graduate" and lose his immunity when he did (not to mention, his love interest is like, fourteen; at eighteen, I can handle that. At twenty? It would take waaay too long setting up all the circumstances I'd require to be okay with that, and that wouldn’t work unless it was the point of the book, which it's not).

So I understand why they did it that way, but they lost a quarter of a star.

I really like this book, and I would totally buy it and would totally recommend it to everybody…except for the sequel. I was very disappointed with the sequel, as we will see in my review at a later date. But for a debut novel especially, it's fantastic. The writing duo that make up Lex Thomas deserve to be commended!

Stay tuned for more reviews,

LA Knight

Melting into Dystopias

As a writer who is friends with other writers, of course my friends and I all read. And of course because we both read and write, we like to discuss the books we read; what we think of the plot twists, the characters, etc. We debate points, consider outside possibilities, predict possible outcomes, and ferret out weak spots.

So during one such discussion, my fellow writers in my writing group and I started talking about dystopias. We've all seen them. The most famous ones right now are The Hunger Games (the second film, Catching Fire, came out semi-recently), followed by the Divergent Trilogy, the first film of which premiers in mid-March. Then there are the classics like Soilent Green and Fahrenheit 451.

But it seems like these days, the classification of dystopia is being thrown around a lot when it doesn't really fit well with the actual premise of the book.

What is the biggest theme of a dystopian novel? A dysfunctional government, seething with corruption, that's basically out to get you. Screw up once, you're dead meat. In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, reading actual books is a crime that—if you refuse to surrender said books—can result in your execution.

In The Hunger Games, if you defy the Capitol, they come after you hard (case in point, the ultimate destruction of Districts 12 and 13). In Lauren Oliver's Delirium, anyone who breaks the laws to prevent "infection" from this supposedly contagious mental illness is sanctioned, then put in prison or punished in some horrible way. I recently wrote an essay, actually, about the difference between utopia/dystopia and straight-up dystopia novels, highlighting the acknowledged tyrannical fist of a corrupt government.

But a lot of books these days that I've seen have been labeled as dystopias when honestly, it doesn’t actually seem like they are. Maybe it's a sales ploy sort of thing. Maybe it's to make more people buy the books. I don't know. But I'm seeing less dystopia in my dystopian novels these days, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

In Kiera Cass's supposedly dystopian novel The Selection, we're introduced to the kingdom of Ilea, which is run via a caste system. While they have rebellions, and the laws can be fairly strict (being pregnant outside of wedlock can get you thrown in prison unless you were sexually assaulted), there isn't really anything corrupt in the government that we see in the first novel. The government isn't tight-fisted or cruel or tyrannical. The king and queen genuinely care about their subjects and their kingdom. What is so dystopian about this book, exactly?

Hop over to Wither by Lauren Destefano, first book in The Chemical Garden Trilogy. In Wither (and its sequel, Fever), the government doesn’t really show up in the storyline. You see the president on television maybe once or twice. You hear about riots and rebel attacks and all that.

But no policemen or government workers ever attack the main character or anyone she knows. The bad guys don't have government authority behind them. The government is actually pretty much an ineffective mess sludging around in the background, not doing anything. The tyrannical evil entity is the father-in-law of the main character, Rhine—and he's the villain of the novels, as well. In fact, his creepy attitude and scary dictatorship reminds me more of less-violent and overtly-psychotic Annie from Stephen King's Misery than President Snow from The Hunger Games.

I'm currently reading a so-called dystopian novel called Inhuman by Kat Falls, where the government has a fairly iron-fisted grip on the country. But that's because about twenty years prior in the storyline, a virulent and so-far incurable form of fast-mutating super-rabies swept through the country and martial law was basically put into place to try and stop it before everyone keeled over dead. The virus is still incurable, and outbreaks still happen.

Imagine if zombie plague popped up in the real world. How would the US government handle it? Exactly the way they do in Inhuman. That's not dystopian. The government's not corrupt. No one's rights are being unfairly squashed or whatever. It's a public safety issue, like the cops forcing you to stay in your homes while they try to apprehend a terrorist running around out on the streets.

I could go on for days about this, actually. Novels like Divergent by Veronica Roth, Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel, Rot and Ruin by Jonathon Mabry, The Loners by Lex Thomas, Shatter Me by Tahareh Mafi, Insignia by SJ Kincaid, or Gone by Michael Grant aren't actually dystopian novels. Most (though not all) of these actually fall more under post-apocalyptic, which isn't the same thing—though I fear it may be melting into the blanket-label of dystopian.

Am I being too picky about this? Maybe. But I actually know people who hold the dystopian classification in contempt, and those people aren't buying a lot of the books I mentioned above which are being incorrectly labeled.

What's my point? Authors, editors, agents, publishers, reviewers—be specific. Just because it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, doesn't mean it's a duck. It might actually say "cock-a-doodle-doo" instead of "quack," which probably means it's not a duck. Actually, if it looks like a duck but crows like a rooster, it's probably a parrot in disguise. And maybe readers shouldn’t judge a book by cover or classification, but you know they do. So please, advertise accurately.

Stay tuned for reviews for Shatter Me, Inhuman, The Loners, and Rot and Ruin coming soon!

— LA Knight