Variant #1

While I was not a huge fan when I started reading Variant, I loved it by the end. Many of the things that I didn’t like in the beginning were cleared up as the novel progressed, and character choices that seemed inorganic started to make sense the more I read the novel.

Benson Fisher has bounced from foster home to foster home for as long as he can remember, holding down meager jobs and friendless, after all, how can you make friends when every few months he has to move and can’t afford a cell phone or a laptop to keep in touch. But Benson has hope, he just was accepted into the prestigious Maxfield Academy on a full scholarship. The school has a full-ride program for orphaned and foster homed children and Benson was the candidate that they chose. Benson believes that this is the answer to his prayers, a permanent place to stay until he graduates, a good college, and friends. He has never been more wrong about something in his entire life.

Once at the school he finds that there are no adults; rather cameras and monitors, and a video every morning from a strange man telling them what to do. Everyday it is different, different classes that they have to teach themselves, crazy and violent paintball matches, weird PE classes, and that is just the beginning. Sometimes the doors lock on the students, forcing them to sleep outside in the cold with only a handful of sleeping bags for the entire populous. Other nights. Other times the man tells them to punish each other and send specific students to detention, no one has ever come back from detention. Anyone who has ever tried to run away has been killed, and it seems to Benson that no one even wants to try and escape the strange prison they are all being held in.

Every student was like Benson when they arrived, no family or friends to miss them, and the school knew it. Benson is determined to figure out what the purpose of the school is and escape, but talking about such things has put students in detention never to be seen again. The school is divided into gangs, and a few of them are tired of Benson poking his nose into business that isn’t his and decide to take him and his girlfriend out, even if it isn’t sanctioned by the school. That’s when things go from bad to worse.

Benson can barely walk after the beating his received, but Jane isn’t breathing. Benson is trying to get up and run for help when Jane suddenly sits up and starts making her way to a secret bunker near the school. Benson hobbles after her yelling to stop, but she doesn’t hear them. Once inside the bunker Jane does something crazy, she pulls off her ear and plugs a cord into it. Jane is a robot, and Benson watches as she downloads herself into a computer, 1s and 0s about him and the rest of the students at the school.

Now Benson doesn’t know what to do. Who would believe him about Jane, and more importantly who else is a robot. After all, Jane can’t be the only robot among them. Benson starts to make lists of when the students arrived, who has the most connection with the strange man in the videos, but if Jane who wanted to get out of the school, seemed to bleed when hurt, and who’s “heart” raced when they kissed, Benson doesn’t want to trust anybody. He needs to escape now more than ever, but to do so he has to have help, and he has to figure out who the robot spies are among them.

I really like this book by the end, things that didn’t always make sense in the beginning got cleared up and the story moved forward with excitement. I cannot wait to read the sequels!

TRUST NO ONE!

Ersatz Elevator (Series of Unfortunate Events #6)

This series gets more and more thrilling with each book! The action of the Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket keeps the pages turning long after I had planned to take a break for work and sleep. The story starts, as they all have, with the Baudelaire children meeting their new guardian. This time it is a rich couple names Esme and Jerome Squalor. Esme only cares about money and what is in it fashionable. Jerome is actually loving and caring, despite his faults if hating arguing and going with whatever Esme wants. The situation a actually starts out rather favorably, the Squalors happen to live near the Baudelaire's old home, so they are at least in an area with one caring guardian for the time being. 

All that changes when Esme begins working with a new auctioneer, Gunther who is really Olaf in disguise. The children try and tell Jerome but he doesn't want to listen as a using Gunther could potentially lead to an argument. While trying to find out Count Olaf's plan, the children stumble over the kidnapped quagmire triplets who have been caged in a broken elevator shaft. 

Knowing there aren't dead brings hope to the Baudelaire orphans, but they lack the ability to free them at the time of discovery. 

Hoping to save them during transport, Violet, Klaus and Sunny once again go to Esme for help, this time with proof. Unfortunately, Esme has been in league with Count Olaf the entire time. The two met years before, and Esme has been infatuated with him ever since. 

With Esme's help, Olaf is once again able to escape with the quagmires and evade police capture. Jerome, wanting to forget the whole mess tells the children that he will continue to care for them only if they give up trying to rescue the quagmires. Violet tells him no, they won't give up in their friends. So the three once again find themselves alone and without a guardian. 

Austere Academy (Series of Unfortunate Evens #5)

I think that the Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket might be one of my favorite in the series. This is the first book where the Bauldelaires meet the Quagmire triplets, and their story arch is one of the best in the series. 

The book begins with Violet, Klaus, and Sunny beginning boarding school at Prufrock Preparatory School where the motto is "Memento Mori," latin for "Remember You Will Die." Not a pleasant motto for a school. The children meet their new Vice Principal Nero, a ghastly man who insists on playing the violin for hours despite having no talent for it. He forces the orphans to sleep in a shack with crabs that pinch their feet, fungus that drips from the ceiling, and ugly pink and green wallpaper. Classes involve listening to stories about milk and measuring frying pans and pencils, plus there is no weekend. School goes for all seven days, and concludes with a violin concert that every student is forced to sit through. 

Carmelita Spats is also introduced for the first time in this novel (her role becomes much greater in future books). She is mean, rude, and insists on making fun of the orphans for losing their parents and constantly calls them cakesniffers. Despite Carmelita, the horrid housing, and the violin concerts the Baudelaire children have one silver lining, they meet and befriend the Quagmire triplets.

As it turns out, the Quagmire's have inherited a large fortune when they  lost their parents in a horrible fire, just as the Baudelaires did. Only the Quagmires also lost their brother, leaving only Duncan and Isadora. 

The Baudelaire children should know better to be hopeful in any situation. Within days, Count Olaf was at Prufrock Preparatory School disguised as the new gym teacher, forcing the orphans to participate in his S.O.R.E. program in the hopes that Vice Principal Nero would let him home school the children and become their guardian. 

With the help of the Quagmire triplets, the Baudelaires are able to defeat Count Olaf... But at a price. Two if Count Olaf's associates, the white faced women, kidnap the Quagmires. While speeding away, Duncan yells out, "The V. F. D.  You need to know about VFD!" 

This concluded the book, leaving the Baudelaires again with no home, but now with a purpose. To not only find out what VFD means, but more importantly to save their friends. This novel starts the connection between books. Before, they were all individual novels, tied together by Olaf chasing the children, but now things start to get more in depth. Characters reappear, and ideas and the VFD become important in the children's lives.