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.

“Any more rules?” I finally asked.
She shrugged. “Don’t be tardy. Wear your uniform during class and meals. No drugs or alcohol, not that you could get them in here. Don’t destroy property. You know—common sense stuff. There’s a full list in your manual.”

The concept is interesting – the school is like a prison. This is a school in which all the duties of the school are performed by the students themselves. There are gangs that do the Janitorial, the admin, the dorms and there is a massive wall outside to “keep them safe”. I was thinking of Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption trying to keep his nose clean.

Things here can be good if you stay out of trouble. You just have to follow the rules

And you know what a teenager hates more than school? Rules. And what they desire most: to belong to a group. To feel accepted. To have a say.

I believe in that aspect, this book is great for teenagers. It offers a look into how rules can be good and bad for you and the conformity and mob rules. It’s YA fiction, so the groups have goofy names (but not Harry Potter level): 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.

“He said he doesn’t want to join Havoc or the Society,” Curtis said. “That means he’s in the V’s.” He looked at me. “Isn’t that right?”

I had to chuckle – 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…. FREEDOM.

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.

The plot gets better though – you find out the secret – Jane and Dylon are not quite human. Not vampires or werewolves like Vampire Academy but I’ll leave a bit of surprise in there for you.

The only spoiler I will give you is that he manages to escape into the real world and that the book ends with a massive cliffhanger.