Enclave

Kit Reed's books are like the Academy in Enclave: They look like safe places to escape for a while. Until you're sealed in. And the walls start closing in. And the air becomes unbreathable. Enclave is a great read. First of all, nobody does kids like Reed. And by that I mean when she writes a teenage character, it's not a thinly veiled version of herself. She writes kids you love, kids you laugh at, and kids you want to see buried alive in a freak cement truck accident. So, take this scary-good cross section of the teen brain, throw in some SEVERELY dysfunctional grown-ups (is there any other kind when you're that age?), grind in a dash of plague, pepper with a massive helping of paranoia, and you've got Enclave. It's great for a plane, but your average reader will be better served reading it on the ground, in a big open field, or a high-ceilinged room with multiple exits. A couple of choice quotes: "Below us I can hear Teddy, like, ratcheting up his guts. It sounds like they are coming out in long, pink snakes, it's enough to raise the dead and I can tell you, they will be screaming, SHUT UP!" "Dude, what the hell is sin?" You will love the Killer Stade character, and get the feeling that Reed loves him, too, but like so many of her books, she makes you get inside the people you hate, as well. Not to show you how terrible/evil/alien they are, but how thin a line there is between them and you, and how easily circumstance can shove across to the other side, or how so many of us go there willingly, of our own volition and with the best intentions, when you don't even know our feet are moving.

Former marine "Sarge" Whitemore renovates Clothos, an isolated island that once was a Benedictine monk monastery. The only survivor from the religious order is elderly lay brother Benny. After the reconstruction is completed, Sarge offers a deal to affluent parents with troubled youngsters. In exchange for an exorbitant amount of money, he informs them that he can save their dissolute off spring from themselves and the ugly world. Give him their kids so his "hermetically sealed private school" can "keep them safe". The response from bone weary emotionally shot adults is incredible as bidding wars over obtaining one of the hundred seats begin. Sarge collects the chosen hundred; tosses away their gizmos and on Destination Day takes them to the remote isle that the unhappy kids scornfully call Mount Clothos. Nothing works in accordance with the plan as the physician is a drunk, kids hack into the computer room, Benny hid an ailing friend whose illness has pandemically spread amongst the residents, and then there is the rest of the staff and the ghost. Ironically in spite of his martinet throwback drill instructor persona, Sarge is not the champion of this intriguing story line. Instead the teens led by peer Killer Stade are the heroes as they fight to stop the virus spread and the mob mentality of the staff and faculty. Quite frankly adults are condemned (worse than in Wild in the Streets) as miscreants who fail at the ecology, at raising their kids, and at saving those stuck at the isolated island. Fans who appreciate something off beat will enjoy this satirical allegorical thriller that claims the boomers and Gen X as pathetic losers with the present teen generation the only hope to save the planet from its elders. Harriet Klausner