Book review: The Afterblight Chronicles, School's Out, by Scott Andrews

School’s Out, by Scott Andrews, is another installment in Abaddon Books’ post-apocalyptic series, The Afterblight Chronicles. The story follows a group of students and staff members at St. Marks, a private boys’ school, trying to stay alive after a worldwide virus (called “The Cull”) has killed off everyone whose blood type is not O-negative.

The story is told first-person by Lee, one of the surviving students. At first glance the book may seem to be a young-adult novel, but once you get a few pages in, you realize that’s not the case at all. It’s a gory, violent tale; telling it from the point of view of a 15-year old boy doesn’t make it a YA book.

A small group of students and a few teachers survive The Cull. Others who have left to be with their families eventually make their way back to the school, looking for safe haven. Some folks in the surrounding countryside have also survived, and as can be expected, many strange and threatening communities rise out of the chaos.

The book is very well-written. I found myself fully absorbed right away, and I didn’t lose interest at all throughout the story. At times it seems an updated version of Lord of the Flies, with more bad language and heavier artillery. There is an underlying theme of leadership that runs throughout the book – the thin line that differentiates a good and a bad leader, and how that line can become blurred very easily.

The first-person format works well here. The reader gets to follow Lee and see both how he changes and how the world changes, and Andrews does a great job of making Lee’s narrative insightful and entertaining, as well as occasionally comical.

The book is filled with a cast of fleshed-out characters, some of whom get killed off and some who desperately hang on till the very end. Even the bad guys are real enough to make you care about what happens to them. The story is well-paced and very action-packed, but the action does not override the plot or take the place of real storytelling.

I would recommend this book to any horror or dark fantasy reader. There is no supernatural element – just a bunch of deranged and twisted people – so those who can’t live without a vampire, demon, or ghoul, be forewarned.

The Afterblight Chronicles: School’s Out by Scott Andrews is a 290-page mass market paperback, available online from Amazon. The ebook version is also available from Rebellion Publishing, which owns Abaddon Books.

(Originally published by Whispers of Wickedness, March 2008)

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