Variant by Robinson Wells

I really hate when I'm reading a book and I think it's just going to be a single book and it turns out to be a big setup for another book. This book was confusing, and your left with more questions than answers at the end of the book then when you started. When I read the insert I thought "Oh this will be a fun read, something different" Something different all right.

At first this book reminded me of "The School for Dangerous Girls" by Eliot Schrefer. With the gangs and the different alliances and all of that, then with the urge to escape. However that was where the similarities ended.

****SPOILER ALERT**** If you haven't read or intend to read this book, do not read any further because I will be talking about key plot points in the book.

So I am reading this book, trying to figure out what is actually going on in the school - pretty much what the author is intending for you to be doing - and out of nowhere he left hooks you. I was forming some theories about what was going on with the school, who they were actually testing, what it was actually for - then BAM on page 218-219 halfway through the book all of a sudden we have androids. That's right some of the main characters end up being robots that are being controlled by the school. At that point I was like " What the hell is going on? " but I kept reading because I assumed Wells was going somewhere with this information.

Finally all hell breaks loose and the main character Benson Fisher convinces everyone that this school is messed up and they try to break free. Only now they figure out that several of the animals in the forest are actually also robot's with cameras in them.

At the end the reader still doesn't know who is running the school, why these kids are chosen, and then Benson comes upon a small village in the final pages looking for help for Becky who is gravely wounded and comes in contact with Jane who was the original robot he uncovered - only she looks older now and says she thought they both died. Which leaves the question of if people had gotten out of the school and the owners of the school had used there likeness to mold there robots, or if this is the same Jane that they have fixed to make better. See what I mean with more questions than answers?

I was defiantly disappointed that this wasn't just a one book read, I may read the second one when it comes out to see what happens, then I will have a better view of if this could have been made into one book. It just frustrates me that there are so many series now. I understand that some books have very good luck with series, and that the characters get better and better. However sometimes I think there are series that could have just as easily been much better with one book instead of several. I do enjoy series books, don't get me wrong, but I don't want to spend all my time reading about the same characters, sometimes I just want to read one book and have it be done with.

~~Afterthought~~
While I was out and about tonight I thought a little more about this book's ending. A theory I came up with is whomever is running the school and testing the androids probably made another copy of Jane that was a little bit older (because obviously at some point if people were there long enough they would need to age), but since she supposedly "died" at the school when Dylan murdered her, they probably uploaded the existing memories and such into this new copy and was holding on to her in this small village by the school in the event that all the current humans died or were killed and they could bring Jane back into the picture. Which would explain why she said "I thought you died. I thought we both did." So I'm guessing that in the next book Jane will be on the good side because she "loves" Benson and wants to help him free whoever is in the school.