When a virus deadly to adults infects their high school, brothers David and Will and the other students soon break into gangs that fight each other for survival and the hope of escaping their quarantine. - (Baker & Taylor)
A year after his school is decimated by a massive explosion, loner David Thorpe watches in horror as his classmates succumb to a brutal virus that renders them deadly to adults and forces them to endure a violent gang existence while locked in the school under military quarantine. - (Baker & Taylor)
“As original as The Hunger Games, set within the walls of a high school exactly like yours.” – Kami Garcia,New York Times best-selling co-author of the Beautiful Creatures novels
It was just another ordinary day at McKinley High—until a massive explosion devastated the school. When loner David Thorpe tried to help his English teacher to safety, the teacher convulsed and died right in front of him. And that was just the beginning.
A year later, McKinley has descended into chaos. All the students are infected with a virus that makes them deadly to adults. The school is under military quarantine. The teachers are gone. Violent gangs have formed based on high school social cliques. Without a gang, you’re as good as dead. And David has no gang. It’s just him and his little brother, Will, against the whole school.
In this frighteningly dark and captivating novel, Lex Thomas locks readers inside a school where kids don’t fight to be popular, they fight to stay alive.
"Take Michael Grant's Gone and Veronica Roth's Divergent, rattle them in a cage until they're ready to fight to the death, and you'll have something like this nightmarish debut...Thomas' whirlwind pace, painful details, simmering sexual content, and moments of truly shocking ultra-violence thrust this movie-ready high school thriller to the head of the class." -Booklist (starred review) - (Random House, Inc.)
Lex Thomas is the pen name used by the writing team of Lex Hrabe and Thomas Voorhies. Lex and Thomas met in a writers' group in Los Angeles. Their friendship developed as they tried to blow each other's minds with clips from bizarre movies. In 2005, they became a screenwriting team and found that writing with a friend is much more fun than doing it alone. QUARANTINE: THE LONERS is their first novel. - (Random House, Inc.)
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* Take Michael Grant's Gone (2008) and Veronica Roth's Divergent (2011), rattle them in a cage until they're ready to fight to the death, and you'll have something like this nightmarish debut. It's an apocalypse writ small: a sick teen infects a Colorado high school with a disease so deadly that half the building is blown up by the military and the rest is sealed inside a giant dome. Every two weeks the ceiling is split for an air drop of food and supplies, and it's during these drops that the 1,000 surviving kids—split into warring cliques with names like the Nerds, the Sluts, and the Freaks—fight, steal, and even kill to make good. Because of a precontagion feud with Sam, the leader of Varsity (the jocks' gang), David is forced to eke out a loner's existence. But while protecting his younger brother, Will, from the horrors of the darkened hallways, David becomes an underground hero—which begins to infuriate Will, who also longs for the spotlight. Though not totally implausible, this is for fans of gritty sf dystopia, and Thomas' whirlwind pace, painful details ("old socks in a zip-lock freezer bag" serve as one character's pillow), simmering sexual content, and moments of truly shocking ultraviolence thrust this movie-ready high-school thriller to the head of the class. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.
Horn Book Guide Reviews
David and Will Thorpe start the year with an unexpected, indefinite quarantine in their school; the spreading airborne virus, carried by adolescents, kills adults. After months of hiding from color-coded, clique-based gangs, David unwittingly becomes leader of the Loners. The narrative is uneven until the final quarter, but this novel is a fascinating character study of teens fighting for survival.
Kirkus Reviews
Lawlessness and violence erupt in a quarantined high school. David Thorpe can't ditch school and his ex-friends on the football team because it's his epileptic younger brother's first day. That's the day a weapons manufacturer's biologically improbable virus reaches the school--a suspension-of-disbelief–necessary germ that infects teenagers but kills everyone else. However, the virus leaves teens as they leave puberty, taking their resistance but allowing them a chance to escape. Government technology tells the exact date a student will leave puberty and quarantine, just from a thumb on a scanner. Knowledge of this "escape date" undermines the novel's potential for claustrophobic tension. The breakdown into chaos and establishment of new orders (fierce fighting for resources dropped every two weeks) are mostly skipped over. The virus causes white hair, enabling cliques (Varsity, Geeks, Nerds, Freaks, Skaters, the Pretty Ones and Sluts) to dye their hair uniform colors for identification. David and the other outsiders must fight the strict caste system by forming their own clique. The female-dominated groups--Pretty Ones and Sluts--reflect a tiresome woman-as-commodity approach. The female lead and love-triangle anchor (fought over by David and his brother) only occasionally shows signs of personality and is offended but also "excited" by unwanted groping. Additionally, the major characters' voices are indistinguishable and the villain cartoonishly evil--characterization is generally ignored in favor of more gore. At least this battle for survival has gore going for it. (Science fiction. 14-18) Copyright Kirkus 2012 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.
Publishers Weekly Reviews
First in the Quarantine trilogy, this debut novel from Thomas, a pseudonym for first-time writers Lex Hrabe and Thomas Voorhies, is a violent and somewhat campy high-concept mashup, tossing Walter Hill's The Warriors into a high school setting and seeding it with elements of Lord of the Flies. After a biotech disaster unleashes a weaponized disease that creates teenage carriers and kills adults exposed to them, McKinley High is quarantined. A year later, themed gangs—including Varsity, Freaks, Pretty Ones, and Sluts—have formed to fight over a once-a-week food drop from the government. David, an unaffiliated "Scrap," works with his epileptic younger brother, Will, to get by, and eventually ends up leading his own gang of outsiders after saving the life of an outcast Pretty One named Lucy. The battle between Varsity and the newly christened Loners occasionally gets muddled, and the authors are more interested in high-impact brutality than realism, but the fast and gory action (one trap-filled hallway sequence is particularly memorable) should satisfy the core audience. Ages 14–up. Agent: Mollie Glick, Foundry Literary + Media. (Apr.)
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School Library Journal Reviews
Gr 9 Up—David's experiences at his typical American high school turn into terror after a huge explosion changes everything. He and the other students watch as their teachers die gruesome deaths, and, when they try to escape, they are fired upon by the military. Weeks later, the canopy that traps them opens to drop supplies, and they are forced to fight tooth and nail to survive. A giant television screen is brought in, projecting a talking head that explains that they are carrying a contagion that only affects prepubescent teens, and so they are under quarantine. Quickly, the students form into gangs to protect one another and to help snap up the food that is delivered via black helicopter every two weeks or so. Sam, whom David attacked at a party while drunk, is the head of the strongest gang, called Varsity, and David ends up leading The Loners. The relationship between David and his brother, Will, may be the best part of this story, but it takes a backseat to the battles and struggle of the rival gangs in this first book in the series. While some of the treatment of girl and boy characters seems a bit clichéd, this is a solid choice for teens hooked on the dystopian genre.—Jake Pettit, Thompson Valley High School, Loveland, CO
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