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Reviewed by: The Merciless King of Moore High by Lily Sparks Meg Cornell Sparks, Lily The Merciless King of Moore High. Flux, 2024 368p Paper ed. ISBN 9781635830965 16. 99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781635830972 9. 99 Reviewed from digital galleys R* Gr. 9-12 When the adults of Brockton, Connecticut, amass together into bus-sized, twisted-limbed horrors of mindless homicidal intent, Student Council member Kay Kim and her peers at the elite Jefferson High bunker down in their school and get serious. Nine bleak months later, the Student Council has taken control of the starving student body with some shady maneuvering, while Kay's unfortunate honest streak and discovery of an alarming Council secret leave her exiled outside, at the bone-crunching mercy of the "Growns. " Fortunately, a fearsome squad of knight-cheerleaders finds her and brings her to Moore High, where gore-filled dystopia meets the hokey-serious pageantry of a Medieval Times restaurant. While Jefferson wasted away under an increasingly duplicitous and censorial autocracy, Moore stood fast, led by King Max (and his shrewd wizard, Merlin) in Camelot-on-spring-break monarchical prosperity, complete with a deadly political hierarchy of scheming dukes, noble ladies, and loyal knights. Most shockingly to Kay, the Moore kids go out to slay the "dragons" terrorizing the land or die trying, using the monsters' rotting remains to increase Moore's fortifications and resources with every hunt. High school gossip becomes court intrigue with fatal implications in this fabulous hybrid-genre world of medievalism, teen social dynamics, and survival horror, which explores the twisted power games that occur in all three. Individual characters, from cruel King Max's best friend and Kay's love interest Brick, the Captain of the Guard, to the charismatic secret resistance leader Leo, to the High Priestess Artemis of the harem-girl Theater Department, are all finely crafted in voice, adaptational resonance, diverse representation, and motivation. While secrets between the schools surface in the satisfying manner of a murder mystery, Sparks deftly—mercilessly—explores what it means for teens to survive systemic oppressions, one another, and the end of the world. End Page 294 Copyright © 2024 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
Meg Cornell (Tue,) studied this question.