2. Deadly Class
Genre: Young adult fantasy
What it’s about: It’s 1987, and Marcus Lopez is a student at King’s Dominion High School for the Deadly Arts, the most brutal high school on Earth, where the world’s top crime families send the next generation of assassins to be trained, and classes include Dismemberment 101, Beheading, Poison, and Black Arts.
Rick Remender reimagines high school into a high stakes game of deadly murder. But instead of the straightforward “high school with assassins” plot you’d expect, Remender puts his usual twist on proceedings, putting lead character Marcus through a harrowing assignment to kill a man who deserves to be killed, and then a jaunt to Vegas where his past comes back to haunts him. If you thought The Hunger Games was dark, wait till you read this.
