Variant Review

Title: Variant
Author: Robin Wells
Pages: 384 first edition hardback
Genre: Sci-Fiction
Ratings: 4/5 stars

This book takes place in Maxfield Academy. Maxfield is a private school, isolated in the mountains. But it is completely different than how you expect. The students have absolutely no contact with the outside world, including the fact that they have no calendars.  Also the school is surrounded by a 12-foot wall, and beyond that a 12-foot fence. This adds to the creepy feeling of the school, and it sets up for most of the plot.

Benson Fisher is a new student at the school, and he soon finds Maxfield has many secrets. One of the main ones: There is no escape. Benson soon becomes determined to find out all of the school’s secrets, and this annoys many of the students including his roommate and friend, Mason. Now as Benson finds out more and more about the school, he distances himself from his friends more and more. Suddenly his girlfriend, Jane, is killed by another student at the school, which shows him the biggest secret of the entire school. One that nobody else knows. So now Benson must find proof to show all the other gangs the big secret. Once he does, a big group of 35 try to escape. But only 2 survive.

What I really liked about the book was just the overall writing of it . In that I mean that I love how all the subplots tie together, and that the characters are written so that you can never really trust anyone at anytime. This ties into the Theme. A possible theme I thought of for the book is : “Don’t trust unknowingly, because things can be different than they appear. But something I didn’t like about the book was that it is rather cliche. Even though all the plot twists were pretty original, you can pretty well predict when they are coming.

Contributed by Bernice Trapp