You're Gonna Go Far, Kid - The Offspring

The Loners
Quarantine, Book 1

Author: Lex Thomas
Pages: 416
Publisher: EgmontUSA
Source: EgmontUSA via NetGalley

Description from Goodreads:
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.

First Sentence: "Someone must have bitten off her nose."

Review:
I've been through a couple of these kids-trapped-in-a-building-without-adult-supervision books already this year, like This Is Not a Test and Monument 14. In theory, I really like that basic structure, because it leaves a lot of space to do interesting things with social dynamics. Here, it was mostly just a way to isolate kids so they can do really awful things to one another.

When I read Monument 14, one of my issues was that none of the kids are particularly likable. Well, compared to the kids in The Loners, I pretty much want to be best friends with everyone from M14. Seriously, there's no one in this book that isn't a RAGING asshole. Even before the apocalyptic scenario, these kids were horrific.

David, the main character, is supposed to garner my sympathy because his mother died and his girlfriend, the hottest piece of ass ever apparently, cheated on him with the guy who took his spot on the football team when he quit. Boohoo, poor Mr. ex-QB. I would have felt badly for him, because both of those things suck, except that, by the time I learn this, he's already commented on how much he wants to sex a couple of different girls. When he finds out about his girlfriend's infidelity, the first thing he does is grab her arm really hard. Not cool. Then he gets drunk and starts a fight. I would hate this guy in real life and I hate him in this book.

His younger brother, Will, seemed like he might be better at first. He should have added some depth to the book, since he has epilepsy, further complicating survival. Unfortunately, his epilepsy was used only for dramatic effect and not to enhance the plot or make a point. Further, Will proves to be driven entirely by sexual urges. Seriously, he has the opportunity to buy useful stuff or to purchase a gold necklace for a girl he's crushing on (that doesn't like him back), and he chooses the necklace. He's so goddamn stupid. Plus, his brother totally had his back and he didn't do anything to help and was generally an ass as thanks. I mean, I don't like David, but Will was even worse.

The women in the book were awful too, every single one of them, which I guess fits nicely with their male counterparts. The kids in the school break down into gangs, two of which are all-female: The Pretty Ones and The Sluts. Yup. Unsurprisingly, girls have limited options in this scenario, so far as I can tell. They can barter sexual favors to a man for safety. They can defend themselves by joining The Sluts, which means they will be called lesbians and fight with the boys, thus get the worst injuries. Besides them, you've got the ugly girls, the ones that don't matter, who exist only to juxtapose their patheticness with that of the others, like Belinda the fat girl. Of course, there's the one girl outside of this, ex-Pretty One Lucy, who, by nature of being a beautiful virgin gets to be protected and survive.

The world building is exceedingly minimal. It exists only to trap the kids in this school. Blah blah virus, blah blah kills adults, blah blah food deliveries every two weeks. Of course, nowhere in the whole paragraph we get explaining why these kids are locked in their school is a reason given for why all of the kids lost their hair when the outbreak happened. Nor do we find out why their hair grows out white.

Anyway, once the first deliveries arrive and they realize the schedule, the kids form gangs, aka cliques based on high school social status. Even in a post-apocalyptic scenario, apparently, hot people do not hang out with uggos. Good to know. Throughout all of this nastiness, the focus upon appearance remains exceedingly important to everyone. Then, of course, they fight about everything.

Seriously, Lord of the Flies has nothing on these kids. They are doing all of this shit for NO REASON. If they don't cause trouble, the government's going to keep giving them supplies. As far as post-apocalyptic worlds go, this really should not be that bad. Unfortunately, this was apparently a school for demon children, so rape, beatings and deaths are going to be fairly common. Basically, everyone fights for stuff like it's the opening off the Hunger Games, where everyone grabs stuff from the cornucopia, only it's like that ALL THE TIME. Really though, the society they've set up here seems more like prison than anything else; they're all serving their terms, but, while they do, they're fighting for position, for sex and for vengeance.

Also, one thing that really bothered me about this? They had SO MANY WEAPONS. For the most part, that's cool. Just like with prison, you can make weapons out of pretty much anything. I get that and accept it. However, at one point, David mentions having a machete. Where the heck did that come from? It's not like you can easily construct a machete like you could a sort of knife or spear. Did that come in the supplies? If yes, that raises other serious questions. If no, was it in someone's locker? This just seemed inaccurate to me.

What I really don't get is why everything would turn into such a ridiculously violent mess. In Monument 14, the kids realized they had enough for everyone and worked together, making everything bearable. Here, the kids have enough food but make the situation impossible because the gangs hoard food. The Loners ends up reading like some sort of Battle Royale scenario where the kids HAVE to kill their classmates in order to survive. The issue here is that no one is forcing them to do this. They just ARE, because they WANT TO.

If you go to dystopias looking for gratuitous violence, The Loners just might be the book for you. The Loners reads like a horror movie, running through the standard tropes and focusing on gore, blood and violence.

Favorite Quote: "Lucy wished she was a Nerd. Best she could tell, they go to hide in the library and read books all day. It sounded wonderful. She wondered if the Nerds organized salons to discuss great fiction or the pertinence of historical events to the present. Were they living out some Chekhov-worthy existence two floors up, musing over philosophy or quantum physics, while the people below them smashed their heads together?"

"No more alibis, mow them down like flies
Hit 'em right between the eyes
Hit 'em right between the eyes
When you walk away
Nothing more to say
See the lightning in your eyes
See 'em running for their lives"

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