The Academy - Dark Publications

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Product Description
Heres one good reason for staying home from school...

Something strange is happening at Tyler High. The laid-back principal has become unusually strict. The janitors no longer work nights because of what they hear. The students are frightened by what they see. And things are happening on school grounds that defy rational explanation. But there is an explanation. Its just nothing that anyone can begin to believeor hope to survive.

Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

intelligent entertaining horror tale August 7, 2008
11 out of 18 found this review helpful

The school district contains many conservative fundamentalists, who demand censoring books, limiting what is taught, and definitely outlawing evolution. Additionally they insist on not wasting money on poor students. When the principal of John Tyler High School applies to convert it to a charter school she sells it to the teachers and parents, promising higher wages and a better education. By a small margin, Tyler HS becomes a charter school.

Even before the charter was passed, there were some dark zones in the school in which supernatural phenomena seem to occur. The custodial staff bears witness to such events, but they suddenly disappear as do any teacher who opposed the charter concept and student considered "tainted". The personalities of those remaining at Tyler change dramatically and frighteningly. Punishment becomes norm, but these chastisements make the school seem like a rendition prison. Two teachers Linda and Diane, and students Ed, Brad, and Myla see ghosts and hear voices with no one around. They also notice an eerie fog that shows the past when the school had young children having fun in the playground. The quintet teams up to abort the spell the principal has cast but each of them knows that the faculty and student body will horrifically destroy them if they fail.

Using headlines over what to teach in school, Bentley Little designs an intelligent well written entertaining horror tale that sprinkles the curriculum debate with a paranormal extremist position. The story line is fast-paced yet has multiple levels while throughout providing a cautionary undertone that extremism means exclusiveness by leaving people outside the tent. Besides the principal making the law inside the school; the ghosts remind people of the past, and the disappearances add suspense as readers wonder whether the vanishings are mundane or poltergeist in nature. Fans will relish Mr. Little's enjoyable dissertation on education.

Harriet Klausner

4 out of 5 stars

SCHOOL DAYS...SCHOOL DAYS...GOOD OLD FASHIONED SCHOOL DAYS... August 22, 2008
6 out of 8 found this review helpful

I am a big fan of Bentley Little, as he is truly one of the most intriguing horror novelists around, With his penchant for taking the mundane and weaving it into a no holds-barred horror story, he has little equal in the genre.

That being said, this latest offering by the author is set in a high school that has undergone a transformation. It has gone from being a district school to being an independent charter school, and therein lies the rub. Newly independent, the principal takes independency to new heights. Unfettered and unrestrained, everyday concepts of discipline, learning, and loyalty take on new meaning. The teachers, as well as the students, slowly succumb, one by one, to this novel and horrific approach to education. As they do, the school becomes a very scary place indeed, with survival just a hope in one's heart.

As with all Bentley novels, there are some truly horrifying and shocking moments throughout. Though it is somewhat formulaic and has the usual pitfalls that are seemingly the norm with Bentley's novels, such as subplots that go nowhere, unresolved plot issues, and a race to the finish line at the end, it is the journey that is enjoyable, more so than the arrival at one's destination. So, fasten your seatbelts, as it will be a somewhat bumpy ride. Still, as one gets off this rollercoaster, one can be sure that one would willingly clamber aboard again.

2 out of 5 stars

Not his best August 21, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful

I've been a fan of Bentley Little's for years now; whenever I'm in the horror section at Borders, I check to see if there's a new Little book out that I haven't read yet. Some writers have compared Little to King, Straub, Barker, and other greats in the horror fiction field. One blurb on one of his books, from Stephen King, describes Little as "A Master of the Macabre"; and on Little's latest book, The Academy, there's a blurb from King that describes Little as "Horror's poet laureate".

The first book of Bentley Little's book that I read was The Ignored. That book is, in my opinion, Little's best; not only is it a fine horror novel, but I think it could stand on its own as a respectable mainstream novel, with the likes of Upton Sinclair or John Updike. It's the rather hokey supernatural stuff at the end of that novel, in fact, that are its biggest undoing.

Likewise with his 1998 novel, The Store. That novel can be read as a great condemnation of the influence that major "big box" retailers such as WalMart have on small towns in America. It's great satire, another brilliant novel unfortunately done in by overly dramatic supernatural influences at the end.

Most of Little's books are like that: unfettered and unbridled condemnations of large institutions and their dehumanizing effects over regular people. I've never met the man (I did have the opportunity to chat with him online once), but I have this image of Little as a card-holding NRA member, secluded on his property in Arizona and probably voting Libertarian. The dehumanization in Little's books are usually shown as an institutional supernatural horror, which often brings people, particularly those in authority, to their absolute worst, in brutal and quite often sexually explicit ways. In The Association, we get a glimpse of how a home-owner's association can drive a typical homeowner to utter ruin. The Policy shows a family devastated by an evil insurance corporation, sort of Michael Moore meets Freddy Kreuger.

In his more recent books, however, it feels to me that Little is scraping the bottom of the barrel in his search for ways in which he can demonstrate the inhumanizing effects that large institutions can have on people, and his supernatural elements are becoming more and more banal. In Dispatch, which I believe is Little's strongest novel since The Ignored, the "big bad" at the end turns out to be just another misshapen, evil beast. And to be honest, I'm not even sure I got the point of The Vanishing, his 2006 novel.

In his newest novel, The Academy, Little takes on charter schools, and the result is, unfortunately, disappointing. While he handles the trope of a haunted school much more adeptly than Michael Paine did in The Night School, there's still quite a bit that's lacking. The dehumanized victims of the supernatural forces are brutal and vicious in typical Little ways, and in typical Little fashion we witness most of it through the eyes of people who are on the periphery, affected by the forces but not altered by them. But here the causes of the events are given such short shrift that it almost feels like Little uses the novel more as an excuse to showcase brutality and depravity, rather than examine its effects. I went through too many scenes wincing, rather than wondering what was going on. And when the forces behind the events in the novel are finally revealed, I found myself disappointed. It's an interesting villain behind it all, but given so little face time that it's barely seen at all. Most of Little's villains are faceless and operate entirely through intermediaries, but the villain here seems mishandled, even clumsily written.

In general, I enjoy Bentley Little's novels, and I recommend him. The Academy, however, is not his strongest novel, and I can't recommend it to anyone.

4 out of 5 stars

Familiar, but still frightening August 12, 2008
4 out of 7 found this review helpful

John Tyler High has finally become a charter school. This means that the school operates independently of the school district. It also means that Jody Hawkes, Tyler's principal, has complete control over the happenings within the school. Tyler is now for only the best students--the most loyal, the most academically successful, the most financially-stable. Parents must volunteer time or money every semester. Some students are singled out specifically to bully others, enforcing rules in an ever-changing charter. A few people have noticed something wrong...but the punishment for disobedience is severe. Very severe.

"The Academy" is pure Bentley Little. This is both good and bad. Little writes satirical horror like no one else; fans may dote on his use of gore and perversity, but underneath it all is a keen wit and insight into the goings-on of contemporary society. The problem is, it gets a bit old after a while. "The Academy" reads a lot like 2001's "The Association," except instead of a gated community, we have a high school. It's a repetitious formula that takes a bit getting used to, if not only for the fact that you have to have a tough-stomach to read a Little novel--the gore and horror is usually up-front and in your face, though Little's use of subtlety is un-paralleled in the business (if only he'd do it more often...).

Still, repetitious or not, "The Academy" manages to make you squirm and wriggle and look over your shoulder (the cannibalistic scene, for instance, is a real gut-churner). It's all a bit predictable, if you're familiar with Little's novels...but that's obviously not too much of a hendrance (notice the 4 stars). Basically, if you're a Little fan, you're used to it by now. Hopefully, you can wade through the gore and perversion, and still appreciate the satirical remarks about contemporary society (which, let's face it, seem a bit paranoid; doesn't mean he doesn't have a point, though). "The Academy" is horror for the thoughtful reader; like all of Little's novels, it's a horror novel for those of us who aren't afraid to think (but are still afraid of the dark).

3 out of 5 stars

Hit or Miss August 15, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful

If you can overlook the author's endless prattling about Charter schools and politics, which seem to go on ad nauseum at times, The Academy does have some chilling moments. The first 60 pages chugs along rather slowly for the most part, and I do recommend reading them while fully caffeinated, but the book does get slightly better from there.

Also, you are warned, the author uses characters, including high schools students, continuously as vehicles for discussions on school prayer, war, George Bush, yada, yada, yada. Politics aside, this dialog generally reads as forced, and feels way out of place. It pulled me from the story and made me think about the author. Not what I want from a horror novel.

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