The Loners

A fairly terrible book. I was excited when I first heard about this book, and nearly abused my librarian privileges so I could get it the moment it went into circulation. (I love locked room stories! and stories where people have to fight each other to survive! and gore!). But the more I read, the more my heart sank.

To begin with, the writing is bad and unpolished ("throwing her head back in ecstasy, her lips quivering" -- Jesus Christ, shoot me now). Then we have super drab cutout characters who make the lint in my dryer look witty and scintillating. Top this off with rigid cliques and stereotypes, and heaps of unexplained world-building, and you've got a book that didn't so much drop its potential as it did hurl it off the peak of show more Kilimanjaro, never to be seen again.

Also, a huge warning that I would not enjoy this book probably should have been the fact that every female character of note is impossibly beautiful (the first two girls namechecked in the novel are described as "gorgeous" and "if she ever posted a naked picture on the internet, all the comments would be angry claims that she was photoshopped.") On one hand I have to laugh because a lot of female-driven YA books do this too, where all the guys are super gorgeous and buff omgz1!!! But on the other hand, it made me roll my eyes because come on. Books like these that base one gender's main worth on their unbearably torturous beauty (unicorns weep, angels pass bricks, etc), are not going to be books that are particularly intelligent and/or nuanced, let's just say. show less

Originally reviewed on A Reader of Fictions.

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 show more 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. show less

I'm guessing that Quarantine: The Loners is one of those books that most readers are going to love or lament, depending on who they are. This is a book that requires you to completely suspend disbelief and, quite honestly, fill in a lot of the blanks with your own imagination. I didn't mind so much, and I ended up enjoying this book immensely. It grabbed me, and I was happy to let it.

I wouldn't say this book is "original" like the cover mentions, although Lex Thomas does blend things that have been done before into something terrifying and beautiful. David and his brother exist in a world where survival is paramount. I've seen this concept in other books before, but it fit well with the high school setting. After all, what place is more show more cutthroat on a daily basis than high school? Take those same cliques, those same rivalries, and add in an event of apocalyptic proportions. That's what Quarantine: The Loners creates for the reader.

Most of the characters are cut and dry clique members, but the "loners" themselves are really who shine. I couldn't look away as these underdogs fought, against all odds, to survive. In fact, I think that's what really made the book for me. I liked David and Will, but I loved the supporting characters. There was so much to uncover beneath their surfaces and, like I mentioned above, I was more than willing to fill in any blanks. This book moves quickly and I was so immersed that I didn't realize I was nearing the end until there were no more pages left to read.

All in all I was pleasantly surprised with how much this debut brings to the table. I admit I would have liked to see more character development, and more explanation about the virus. The ending definitely left me wanting. Still, there's more in the series so I'm hoping things will resolve themselves. This book is a wild ride, and I know that I couldn't put it down. Next book, here I come. show less

{ I received this as an ebook ARC from NetGalley. Full review originally posted on my blog, PidginPea's Book Nook. }

I love survival stories. Exploring how characters react when their survival instincts kick in is fascinating to me. Quarantine: The Loners follows brothers David and Will as they struggle to survive in the aftermath of an explosion that traps all the students in their school and the spread of the virus that's slowly making them deadly to not only adults on the outside, but to each other on the inside as they grow older. It is indeed "frighteningly dark" - there is some pretty graphic detail of dangerous and deadly situations, but it makes for a fantastic feeling of fear and heaviness that swallows you up and lets you get show more totally lost in this gripping read.

The story is told in 3rd person, with the focus bouncing back and forth between the main characters. I liked this approach because you got to see what was happening all around the school, how one character's actions affect another and what sorts of plans are being made behind other characters' backs. The action was nearly non-stop; with all the students fighting for resources, territory, and respect, there was always something dramatic happening. I flipped pages like crazy, staying up way into the night because I just couldn't tear myself away in the middle of the action.

The dynamic between David and Will is great. Will has epilepsy, so his older brother David has always played the role of protector for him. Now that Will is older, he's getting sick of it and is ready to play the hero on his own. But no matter what he does, he always ends up in David's shadow. And no matter how hard David tries to make the right choices, he seems to always anger Will. Will is so desperate to strike out on his own that he makes reckless, dangerous decisions that he knows are foolish, but he can't seem to help himself.

In the midst of all the chaos happening in the rest of the school, I was surprised to find a nice little love triangle between David, Will, and Lucy, a girl that Will met the summer before. It's alternately touching and frustrating. Frustrating for Will because he knew her first and then David moved in, but also frustrating as a reader because the two guys do ridiculous things when she's around. Will puts his desire to impress her over his need to provide for himself and his brother, and David becomes uncharacteristically, devastatingly careless about all other things when the chemistry between he and Lucy heats up. You know they're both putting themselves in terrible situations, and you just want to scream at the book to make them snap out of it and act right.

The action all leads towards a seemingly inevitable conclusion: you know the gangs are going to fight until only one is left standing. But at the last minute, the plot gets flipped into an unexpected cliffhanger of an ending. Right when you're sure there's about to be an epic final encounter between two rival characters, things you didn't expect (at least not yet) suddenly happen, and you're left in suspense with the last line. I desperately wished the next book was already out - I would have snagged it and kept right on reading.

Anyone interested in survival stories (or curious about what would happen if you were trapped for years in a life-or-death situation in your own high school with your fellow students) should definitely give Quarantine: The Loners a read. I can just about promise you'll be scoping out your own long-term hiding places the next time you walk down the halls of your school. show less

I read this page turner in a few days--while moving and packing with two kids under six. It was a good escape and quite engaging. I am a big fan of future dystopia/post-apocalyptic fiction. Fans of The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner Trilogy, Divergent, Delerium/Pandemonium should enjoy Quaranteen. The lead male characters are well developed and the world that develops when the teens are locked in a school with limited resources seemed fairly realistic, though surpirising enough in it's details to make me want to finish it quickly. It's sort of a Lord of the Flies redux. The lead female characters were a bit one-dimesional though. I look forward to the sequel.

There are many rules that writers can pick from to follow, but one of the most popular has to be: if you can’t come up with an original idea, then its fine to steal one and make it your own. The operative phrase being, “make it your own.” QUATANTINE: THE LOSERS is the first in a series of books that takes its premise from freely from LORD OF THE FLIES. It’s another in a long line of YA Teen Dystopia books where all the adults die, civilization vanishes and the kids are in charge, which is usually about as bad as it sounds.

I not even close to the target demographic for this book, but I really like the GONE books, similar YA series by Michael Grant, so I thought I’d give this one a try. I’ll give the authors credit, they show more don’t waste plunging the reader into the action by page 25 as a typical first day at a large suburban Colorado high school ends catastrophically when a deadly infectious virus is accidently released into the student body, killing everyone over a certain age and forcing the survivors to live in a government enforced quarantine. No one comes in and no one goes out.

Of course in this dire situation, the utter worst in almost everybody comes out, and this being a YA book, it means the survivors all join up with whatever rigid social caste they belong in and prey on the others. Naturally the Jocks (or the Varsity as they’re called here) are the worst, along with a clique of hot girls naming themselves The Pretty Ones. Just like every other YA fiction high school in forever. And for YA book, the violence is quite graphic at times and so is the language, let parents be warned.

The main characters are a pair of brothers and a girl they both develop feelings for as the story develops; they’re flawed but likable kids who are not part of any gang at the start. By sticking up for others, they earn the loyalty of more than a few outcasts and sit themselves on a collision with the story’s villains. One of the reasons why I hung with this book was because the authors do a good job of making you care for the characters and come to root them to not only survive, but escape the hell on earth they’re stuck in through no fault of their own.

I do have do not that the writers practice well the mumbo jumbo pseudo science needed to pull these kind of stories off; here we have a virulent virus that is deadly only to people conveniently over the age of graduation and seems to act with the precision of a deadly nerve gas. It’s one of those things that secret government labs are cooking up all the time in fictional horror; it worked for Stephen King in THE STAND didn’t it.

Anyway, the first book of the QUARANTINE series is an easy read, and the ending is a satisfactory one in that it sets everything up quite well for the sequel, which I will check out and find out what hath William Golding wrought. show less

A really different kind of story.
The plot is just odd enough that I'm not sure if it's believable.

but if you get beyond that, and just read the story.
wow, it's gory and violent (and sometimes just for the sake of gore and violence!)

I didn't like David or Will for at least half of the book, but I was drawn the story and the push for survival these kids showed. And for the sheer love of a good gory but interesting story. The ideas of life inside the school had so many intricate twists and turns.

I'm not sure I'll keep reading the series, but I can say I did enjoy this one! It was just unique enough to be interesting.