School’s Out Forever – Scott K. Andrews
School’s Out Forever (Afterblight Chronicles – An Omnibus Of Post-Apocalyptic Novels) – Scott K. Andrews (Abbadon Books)
“After the world died we all sort of drifted back to school. After all, where else was there for us to go?” Lee Keegan’s fifteen. If most of the population of the world hadn’t just died choking on their own blood, he might be worrying about acne, body odour and girls. As it is, he and the young Matron of his boarding school, Jane Crowther, have to try and protect their charges from cannibalistic gangs, religious fanatics, a bullying prefect experimenting with crucifixion and even the surviving might of the US army. Welcome to St. Mark s School for Boys and Girls…
Certain things make any post apocalyptic novel an essential read for me. Splatter-house style blood and guts, what’s left of society being run by idiots, revolt, and some really bad taste, tongue in cheek humour. All of the above are present in abundance, and as I’d read the first two parts of this omnibus as well as a couple of other novels in the ‘Afterblight Chronicles’ before being handed the omnibus for review, I was over the moon at the thought of reading them again, and being able to finally finish the story. Some people might find this a bit hard going at time, because of the focal character groups young age (as the title suggests,) and the violent and serious approach, but it balances out well with the bad guys/powers that be, being so over the top. Andrews writes in an absolute no nonsense style, so if you’re looking for flowery prose and the pointless filling of pages with ‘beautiful’ description and scene setting, this isn’t the book for you. From the first paragraph to the last, this is a really bleak and thoroughly entertaining look at how far society could crumble and how far the few remaining good people would be willing to go in order to survive. Bloody brilliant… Gav.
