Book Review :: Variant, by Robison Wells

Variant by Robison Wells
Series: Variant #1
Also in this series: Feedback
on October 4th 2011
Genres: Dystopian, Young Adult
Pages: 373
Goodreads

Benson Fisher thought that a scholarship to Maxfield Academy would be the ticket out of his dead-end life.
He was wrong.

Now he’s trapped in a school that’s surrounded by a razor-wire fence. A school where video cameras monitor his every move. Where there are no adults. Where the kids have split into groups in order to survive.
Where breaking the rules equals death.

But when Benson stumbles upon the school’s real secret, he realizes that playing by the rules could spell a fate worse than death, and that escape—his only real hope for survival—may be impossible.

Last updated on 19 January 2022

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Have you read Variant, by Robison Wells?

So basically, hands down, Variant, by Robison Wells is the best book I’ve read in ages! Sure I’ve given high star ratings to quite a few recently (there’s some good stuff out there people!) I enjoyed this so much that I may have to buy it. But you know what’s super duper annoying!? The library doesn’t have the next one! Argh! So I think, when I get paid at the end of the month, this may be my first purchase. Seriously.

The description sounds great already, right?! Right! The blurb on the back says basically what I was going to say, but in a better way. Without giving too much away (there’s potentially a LOT I could give away and spoil it for you, but I won’t), Benson is uneasy about the school from the moment he gets out of the car in the few first pages. And for good reason.

He discovers within minutes of arriving at Maxfeild Academy that no one leaves – people have tried, but no one has succeeded without…well, without dying. He learns that what group he chooses to be in is incredibly important, and though the two biggest groups (the Society – the ones who enforce every single rule they can and obey everything the school tells them; and the Havoc – those who are the trouble makers, really) try to recruit him, he sides with the Variants – those students who know that there is something wrong with the school, and though they follow the rules they would escape if they could.

There are no teachers at the Academy; not an adult in sight. Instead, lessons are given to someone in the Society group each day, and they take the classes. Along with no teachers, there are no staff – all the students have set tasks and duties that they perform, watched carefully 24/7 by the hundreds of cameras with microphones scattered around the school.

With fighting between gangs, a bit of romance, awarded points to buy special items that are delivered in elevators, extreme paint-ball crazy systems and students who have been at Maxfeild Academy so long they’ve accepted they can’t get out, Benson spends a few weeks trying to figure out an escape plan as well as discovering the school’s deepest darkest secrets. Whether he succeeds or not, well…you’ll have to read it to find out!

Written in first person, Robison Wells draws you in with the first sentence and keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire book. I read this book really quickly; wide-eyed and scared for what would happen next seemed to speed up the usual book-reading time. Although it’s not a very long book, it’s extremely well written, with great characters and disturbing events. Although it’s classified as a Young Adults suspense novel, there’s a definite change in genre that I wasn’t prepared for. Don’t worry – that doesn’t give anything away.

Have you read Variant, by Robison Wells? What did you think?