Variant by Robison Wells (Nora)

Summary from Goodreads:

“Benson Fisher thought 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.”

Rating: 2 stars

Robison’s Wells’ Variant tries and ultimately fails to be in the category of “Riveting and Painfully Honest Young Adult Dystopian Novel”.  Personally, I like a dystopian novel that is well-written with an interesting premise every once in a while. Even if it’s not the best book ever written, I enjoy reading them to pass the time, but this book was unfortunately struggling to even be described as “not the best book ever written”. The main character is unbearably whiney and spends a good chunk of the beginning of the book complaining about being a foster child. Again, I like the occasional sad foster kid book, but this one was trying way too hard. In a classic dystopian novel, the horrible realization that things are not what they seem creeps up on the characters, but in Variant, Benson realizes almost immediately that there’s something terribly wrong and starts freaking out. Like every dystopian novel, there was a twist or two, which despite being really unpredictable, were strange and uninteresting. It was very original, the first time I’d ever heard it done, but perhaps no one had used the idea before because it’s not a good one. Variant is one of a series and although there were many unanswered questions at the end of the first book, I seriously doubt I will put up with Benson for another few hundred pages.

Variant is coming from HarperTeen on October 18, 2011.