Hi Guys!
So today is going to be a trilogy round up of Quarantine by Lex Thomas.
(Lex Thomas is the pen name that two authors write under).
Quarantine is a series about a high school on lockdown after a deadly virus is exposed to the teens and they are forced to live and be quarantined within the school. I will be reviewing each book and will notify when spoilers will be present.
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| Rating: 5/5Pages: |
The first book is "The Loners" and starts of with there being "a drop" in the school playground that the kids are all anticipating. We don't know why or what has happened at this point. It then goes back in time to before this big event and we meet the two main protagonists. David and Will are brothers of which it is Will's first day at high school. They are walking the hallways when all of a sudden there is an explosion and the teachers start to throw up blood and instantly die ( If you think that's too gruesome this book probably isn't for you). The book then follows David and Will as they try to come to terms with the fact they are trapped within the school wondering how they will survive and get food especially since they aren't part of a group. The teens have taken it apon themselves to craft different groups such as "the pretty ones" or "the freaks". These are largely social status based but offer vital protection and food.
Let me start by saying the book is extremely violent and is probably not one for the younger readers(below 16?) There's scenes of swearing, sex, rape and acts of murder and it is just extremely brutal. Normally I would shy away from such violence however I really liked it in the book as it showed what lengths they went to to survive and how savage they had become. There was also a lot of thieving for food and people would trade whatever they owned just go get the basics.
We later find out that the virus only thrives in the bodies of teens and that it is deadly to anyone younger or older ( hence why the teachers died). We are also told that a teen who had the virus from an illegal experiment escaped and ran into the school in which the military then had to shoot at him and blew up part of the school.
In the foyer of the school is a scanner in which pupils go to on what is supposed to be their graduation day. Their grad day signifies the virus leaving their body and if the scanner recognises this then they are taking through a chamber and out of the school.
This book reminded me of The Hunger Games as it was very survival based and brutal but it also reminded me of The Maze Runner in which they had to learn to be self sufficient.
David ends up protecting a girl called Lucy and we find out that Will has had a huge crush on her however she likes David and we are faced with a love triangle storyline.
Overall this book really kept me gripped as it's very different from anything I've read before and again I actually really liked how gruesome and survival based it was.
The rest of the review contains events that happen late in the book and I suggest you don't read on unless you've read the first book. Below is a review I recoded over on my YouTube channel.
David is approached by some people called the scraps who do not belong to a group and ask him to be a leader for a group they want to be called " The Loners". David agrees and this is a natural progression for the book which I enjoyed reading about.
One day a student tries to escape during another students grad day and after that stint no more food is dropped into the quad. Things get really desperate for the teens especially for David as not only does he have a group to run but his graduation ay is approaching.
The day he's supposed to graduate the portal and scanner aren't working and David needs to find a way out to survive or risk death due to be surrounded by his friends.
Will, Lucy and the other Loners help David however we are left with a huge cliffhanger!
David find a tunnel to get out however the tunnel collapses on him and Lucy and we don't know if either of them have survived!
Finally a group of outsider teenagers manage to enter the school offering food and help. We are left not knowing who they are and if they are infected or not.
Needless to say I got straight to ordering the next two books and would highly recommend this trilogy!
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| Rating:5/5 Pages: 384 |
The second book starts off different from the first as we start to read from Will's and Lucy's perspective and are left to question what has happened to David. That being said it does pick up right where the first book left off with the group of kids called "The Saints" trying to free the quarantined students. Will and Lucy make a break for the exit and are so close to freedom when a school bus crashes into the side of the school and blocks their only way out. Faced with the reality that they are still trapped within the school the students turn to the Saints for answers about the outside world.
One of the ousiders tells them that other teens have been infected including the Saints and that family's were moving away from their children to protect themselves. The Army proceeded to shoot some of the infected teens and then put out a call for teens to hand themselves in however they didn't know that their fate would be a gas chamber. ( To me it sounded like a lot of what happened during the Holocaust and people handing themselves in not knowing what their future held for them.
Will and Lucy spot a outsider teen wearing an eyepatch that they instantly recognised as David's. When they approach the teen he tells them that he got it off a dead kid and this further backs up our thoughts that David is dead. For me I felt that his death was rather overlooked and didn't focus on it much however this did become apparent why at the end of the book.
Without David the group of Loners starts to disintegrate as they no longer have a leader to guide them. Members including Lucy reach out to new groups in hope of finding somewhere new to belong. Lucy decided to join the slut group and has to endure an initiation week... completely naked.
This leaves Will essentially on his own until Gates a member of the Saints asks him to become their leader. Will suddenly has to deal with this huge amount of power and pressure which I feel goes to his head a little.
It was really interesting to see the tables turn on Sam and to see him go from being the leader of the Varsity guys to being held hostage by the Saints and crumbling to nothing.
There became a point in the middle of the book where everyone seemed at peace with one another and their situation. They had all the supplies they wanted ( thanks to the help from the parents who visited them on the wall) and there seemed to be no major arguments between the groups.
I really liked that in this book you could read from Lucy's and Will's thoughts, experiences and perspectives. I especially liked getting to know Lucy more in the second book.
One overall point I want to make about this book is that it is just as brutal and violent as the first book which I actually really liked.
I'll stop there if you havn't read "The Saints" but if you have or want to see more of my thoughts on the end of the book then keep reading.
During Lucy and Will's time apart in separate groups they have an argument and from a reader's perspective you really want them to makeup and get together now that David's out of the picture and not complicating things. Surprise surprise not long after this point in the book they make up and even get down to... the deed... if you catch my drift.
One event that was quite unexpected and just reiterates how gruesome this book is was when Sam got killed by the pig that managed to get loose. It also showed once again how far Sam had fallen in such a short period of time. When I think of Sam being killed you would expect it to be in a fight probably shot or stabbed not mauled by a pig!
One character we start to get to know a lot in this book is Gates who is one of the Saints. Towards the start of the book we don't know that much about him but as the story progresses we not only find out about his past but I feel the school and the virus as made him go quite mad. Gates slowly starts to go crazy and hallucinate, he starts to believe that Will is his dead brother Colton ( who Gates actually killed).
The big twist at the end is when Will gets to graduate early, leaving Lucy truly on her own and we're left speculating what will happen to her and how will Will cope on the out side. When Will does get outside of the school who is he faced with but his brother! David's alive and thats where they leave it on a cliffhanger. Personally I really liked this ending as you are left with so many questions such as "How is David still alive?" " How's the rest of the state dealing with this virus?" and "How will the book end?". After reading this book I was really excited to see how the authors could possibly wrap up the trilogy and bring it all to a conclusion.
Don't read on if you havn't read the first two books.
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| Rating: 4/5 Pages: 272 |
The third book "The Burnouts" starts again exactly where book 2 left off which is a element I really like within this series. Book 3 is noticeably smaller than the first two books however I didn't feel as if there wasn't enough or too little content. After Lucy kills Gates in the first book she is kicked out of the sluts in the third book as their leader Violent also died in the same fight and the Sluts blame Lucy for her death.
One huge question left from the end of the second book is now that David's alive who is going to be in a relationship with Lucy?! We are back with the love triangle which is made even worse by the fact that Lucy is now pregnant with Will's baby! (This was a major unexpected twist).
One of the things David tells Will when he gets out is that there might be a cure for this virus and they begin to plan to find this cure. However when Will finds out Lucy is pregnant he is set on going back in to find her.
I'll stop there to save spoilers but if you want to find out more and get my review on the final book in the series then keep reading.
So Lucy is left pretty much on her own now that she is group less and stumbles across the "burnouts" who spend all their time making and taking any drug they can find in the school.(she also has a miscarriage, which we probably feel is for the best seeing what situation she is in). One twist to the story was how Hilary dies at the prom she puts on before her graduation. For me I felt like she had it coming to her and she finally got a taste of her own medicine.
David then helps the remaining kids escape the school and sees them reunited with their parents. Then the love triangle really comes to a head. Will gives Lucy an ultimatum to choose between him and David. When Lucy ultimately chooses David, Will flees town and is met by a group of people saying they have "the cure". Sadly this is not the case and the liquid they start to spray on the infected teen actually makes the start to throw up. When David,Will and Lucy start to see this they start to run but tragically Will gets shot in the head. As a reader we feel compassion for his loss but this seems not to be the case for David who essentially turns and leaves him showing very little affection. I also felt that Will's death was very abrupt in this book.
Now fast forward to the last chapter of the book. Lucy and David are reunited and the biggest plot twist of all is that Lucy is still pregnant! When she previously had her miscarriage she only lost of of 2 twins she was carrying! This was really unexpected and its sad that Will never got to know about this other child he had. This last chapter really left me hanging and I would of liked there to of been some kind of epilogue set in the future to see how they tried to get mack to normality.
Overall I really enjoyed reading this series as it really was a different read for me!
I would really recommend you start reading this series if it interest you and until next time,
Sophie x
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