From the Bookshelf of What's the Name of That Book???…

Variant (Variant, #1)

Robison Wells

Why we're reading this: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com …more
[close] https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

Oct 30, 2011 karen rated it it was ok

Shelves: why-yes-i-ya, october-is-spooky

if anyone popped into my RA group looking for a book that was "not well-written, consistent, or plausible," i could hand them this book with full confidence.

and i feel bad for saying that, i do. this book means well, you can tell. the author dedicated it to his best friend erin. that's cute, right? but about thirty pages in, i started getting concerned that this was another YA book actually written by a teen author. i am not going to have another truancy experience, thank you very much. but no,
if anyone popped into my RA group looking for a book that was "not well-written, consistent, or plausible," i could hand them this book with full confidence.

and i feel bad for saying that, i do. this book means well, you can tell. the author dedicated it to his best friend erin. that's cute, right? but about thirty pages in, i started getting concerned that this was another YA book actually written by a teen author. i am not going to have another truancy experience, thank you very much. but no, not a teen, just the brother of dan wells, who i still have yet to read, but seems like a really nice guy.

so this is why i feel bad for hating on this book, because the brother of the author has always been nice when he has come in. that makes perfect sense, right? also, i write my least convincing book reports when i am ill. but these are the cards we were dealt today.

so, seventeen-year-old benson fisher applies for a boarding-school scholarship program in order to get out of the foster-care system cycle he has been swirling around inside for years.he gets it - yayyy - and flies off to new mexico to settle into his new school and meet his new classmates. but oh no! where are the teachers? where are the adult cafeteria and maintenance workers? why are all the children shouting? so, basically - this is a school in which all the duties of the school are performed by the students themselves. please hold your questions until the end. so there are three groups, groups that have formed out of necessity, after some unpleasantness in the past, when the students had been just fending for themselves. and by unpleasantness, i mean many many deaths. this being YA fiction, the groups have suitably goofy names: the society- who play by the rules, havoc - who wear thuglife pendants and like to fight, and the variants - who would like to escape, but are very pragmatic and would like a color-coded escape plan first, please. for safety's sake. (which group do you think benson aligns himself with? i give you a hint and point you towards the title of the book) so, each of these groups perform certain functions in the school, based on agreed-upon and bidded-for contracts. havoc is in charge of food and groundskeeping, society handles admin, nursing, teaching, variants clean up the trash, but all are ruled by a tv screen that depicts an adult face giving out daily punishments, after reviewing the tapes culled from the numerous video cameras and microphones all around the school. and if you get detention, you never come back.... shhhh - questions at the end, please!the lessons are arbitrary lectures on aesthetics or field surveying, and they play a lot of paintball, and points are accrued all around so they can buy clothing and other gear, but never.... their freeeeeedom. so it is shades of ender's game, shades of lord of the flies, shades of any other of the recent batch of YA dystopia where kids form little white gangs and adhere to bizarre group standards in order to show that they are independently minded freethinkers - hey! hands down! and there are ample excuses as to why the kids were chosen, why they can't just call for help or use the internet, or escape over the wall, why they don't just... stop.

okay - now time for questions.

okay, so i just wrote out a string of like 20 questions, but ended up deleting them all because they would probably be too spoilery, for those of you who are interested in reading this, despite my warnings. because it still looks like a book i should like. greg brought it to me at work, saying just that, "this looks like a book you would read." and i did read it. and it was bad. and i am glad i borrowed it rather than buying it, because i was about to buy it, actually. but now i can bring it back. and maybe the person who reads it next will love it, and i would be pleased to hear it. i just hate it when i dislike a book that looks like it means well. it tried, right? especially when it went nuts there at the end and decided to try something "new," and everyone went "whaaaaa??" and then laffed. baffling. truly baffling.

but i will allow this one question - why are YA novels always structured this way, where characters huddle together in like-minded groups instead of utilizing the strengths of all participants? does no one see how this limits the resources? it is a structure that only works if the book is well-written enough to overcome its own inherent silliness. divergent was, i thought, fantastic, even though it had a lot of its own foolishness to overcome. this one tripped over its own foolishness, and then stumbled down a hill, caught on fire, and then just smoldered there.in a not-very-sexy way.

now i am going back to bed. i wouldn't say this book gave me this surely-fatal illness, but i'm also not ruling it out.
...more

134 likes · Like · see review

Mar 05, 2011 Jessica rated it it was amazing

Shelves: youngadult

This book wins both the What The Frak! Plot Twist Award and the Holy Crap Ending Award as well. Book two cannot come soon enough. I went into this book knowing only that it's about a kid who goes to private school and discovers a sinister secret. But there's so much more going on. The school, the other students, it's all so different and so well done that I was perpetually kept on my toes, wondering about what was going to happen next and worrying over Benson, the protagonist, who was clearly go ...more

5 likes · Like · see review