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theangrystackrat's review
adventurous
challenging
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
iconoclastthinker's review against another edition
5.0
I read this book when I was on a co-op during college. I picked it up on a lark at the local Barnes and Nobel strictly because I liked the title and I was studying kung fu at the time. I read it from start to finish in one sitting. One of the most unknown novels in the early 2000s.
russk's review
2.0
I received this book as part of a giveaway from Ryan Gattis and FSG books.
Kung Fu High School is about a school so overrun by gang violence that every single student has some sort of expertise in martial arts. Most students, and even the principal, are in the pocket of a drug kingpin. A new kid moves to town - the archetypal kung fu master who has sworn never to fight again - and his presence kicks off a sequence of events that throws a wrench into the status quo.
PROS:
I've never read a book like this. It's premise is similar to Hunger Games and Battle Royale - teenagers fighting each other - but there is no all-powerful government entity forcing students into this situation. Students have created their families and the school themselves. Also, I've never read a story with martial arts central to the writing. The fight scenes are fast-paced and creative. The action is descriptive and precise. I know very little about martial arts and I could picture the moves in my head.
It reminds me of when I was in school and thought to myself, "What would I do if someone tried to kill me right now? Where could I hide? What could I use as a weapon? How could I have an advantage?" This mindset of survival is unfortunately a reality of schools today. Gattis satirizes the American culture of violence by cranking it up to 11 and diving in with full commitment.
CONS:
The universe of this high school can't seem to decide if the adults do or don't care about the violence. Police, teachers, administrators constantly leave the room or look the other way when there's violence in the school. Officials are bribed by the kingpin. Murders are an open secret. Fistfights happen out in the open air on a regular basis. On the other hand, the students are also constantly trying to hide it. Alliances are kept secret, police are avoided, and blood stains are bleached off of homework. Everyone is in on it except the people who aren't.
Every character except the protagonists feel disposable. In a book about violence, it's not shocking when things turn violent. Deaths feel empty. Betrayals don't feel motivated. It feels like most of the scenes boil down to "Wouldn't it be badass if THIS happened now?"
As a character, I don't even like Jen. I feel like her decisions don't drive the story. Even though she participates in the action, the reins are always being held by Cue and/or Jimmy. They are the ones who take actions that drive the plot forward. Jen is more of a spectator. Even when she does have big character moments, it's when she's being influenced by her brother or cousin.
OVERALL:
Exciting and creatively written, but hollow in terms of character, story, and philosophy.
Kung Fu High School is about a school so overrun by gang violence that every single student has some sort of expertise in martial arts. Most students, and even the principal, are in the pocket of a drug kingpin. A new kid moves to town - the archetypal kung fu master who has sworn never to fight again - and his presence kicks off a sequence of events that throws a wrench into the status quo.
PROS:
I've never read a book like this. It's premise is similar to Hunger Games and Battle Royale - teenagers fighting each other - but there is no all-powerful government entity forcing students into this situation. Students have created their families and the school themselves. Also, I've never read a story with martial arts central to the writing. The fight scenes are fast-paced and creative. The action is descriptive and precise. I know very little about martial arts and I could picture the moves in my head.
It reminds me of when I was in school and thought to myself, "What would I do if someone tried to kill me right now? Where could I hide? What could I use as a weapon? How could I have an advantage?" This mindset of survival is unfortunately a reality of schools today. Gattis satirizes the American culture of violence by cranking it up to 11 and diving in with full commitment.
CONS:
The universe of this high school can't seem to decide if the adults do or don't care about the violence. Police, teachers, administrators constantly leave the room or look the other way when there's violence in the school. Officials are bribed by the kingpin. Murders are an open secret. Fistfights happen out in the open air on a regular basis. On the other hand, the students are also constantly trying to hide it. Alliances are kept secret, police are avoided, and blood stains are bleached off of homework. Everyone is in on it except the people who aren't.
Every character except the protagonists feel disposable. In a book about violence, it's not shocking when things turn violent. Deaths feel empty. Betrayals don't feel motivated. It feels like most of the scenes boil down to "Wouldn't it be badass if THIS happened now?"
As a character, I don't even like Jen. I feel like her decisions don't drive the story. Even though she participates in the action, the reins are always being held by Cue and/or Jimmy. They are the ones who take actions that drive the plot forward. Jen is more of a spectator. Even when she does have big character moments, it's when she's being influenced by her brother or cousin.
OVERALL:
Exciting and creatively written, but hollow in terms of character, story, and philosophy.
sarahconnor89757's review
5.0
A "My Classmate The Barbarian"-esque (If your a connoisseur of HK movies, or a Nicholas Tse fan you'll get that reference) like tale featuring a hard core girl with a bit of an incest problem.
toastx2's review
3.0
Fans of Battle Royale (Koushun Takami) and Severance Package (Duane Swierczynski) should definitely add this their reading pile. It is fast paced and keeps you on the edge of your seat. It doesn’t hurt that it is chock full of kid-like drawings showing you how to reinforce your daily clothing with plastic, giving you more protection from knives with out setting off school metal detectors.
This book may not be suitable for some readers. do not assume Pokemon or other cutesy text due to the name. this is a bloody violent unrelenting novel.
A quick summary-
Everyone knows some form of martial arts at Martin Luther King High School. This is where the locals get the nick name Kung Fu High. Defensive, offensive, a mishmash of street styles, suicide would be thinking you didn’t need to know anything in order to make it through a day. It is more like a “out-patient” prison psych-ward than a school. Avoiding a fight just means that the fight will come find you, and that you will be unprepared when it arrives. It is better if you go searching for the fight yourself, at least then you have a chance at catching it off guard.
Jen and her older brother Cue are both students at Kung Fu High. Their cousin is coming to stay with them after some concerns at home. Jimmy is a prize winning martial artist, who had promised his mother that he would no longer fight, after hospitalizing four men in self defense. Unfortunately for Jimmy, the people at Kung Fu High expect that he will be kicked in, and Jimmy being the champion he is, is a big target for a lot of fools to come after.
The thing about Kung Fu High is that you need to establish your boundaries very quickly. Your first day on campus, you need to find the biggest, baddest mofo on the quad and pick a fight, then you get “kicked in”, losing that fight. Getting your ass handed to you means that no one needs to take you down a peg as the new person, one needs to prove anything by hunting you down. It also shows that you cant just be pushed around, you are not afraid of taking a beating for the hell of it. Avoiding being kicked in means that it will be 10 times worse. a first day kick in could simply be a broken nose, avoidance could put you in the hospital.
Jimmy fails to establish this boundary.
Kung Fu High is a cesspool, unofficially run by drug lords and roving gangs. Cash goes to the city to keep the area less than nice, to keep the lights on, and to ensure that the cops only show up as figureheads when appearances are required.
Concerned parents can opt to take a child out of the school district and place them in private school, but what’s the point? Unless they move, they will still have to traverse the local streets and deal with the public school kids. Would you rather have a child that permanently eats through a straw, or one that might be able to avoid that fate with a little bit of extra-curricular face bashing? Better to let them slug it out in fear than guarantee they are screwed up for life.
This is one of the bloodiest books I have ever consumed. The descriptions of broken bones, contusions, bruises and trauma was enough to make me queasy at points. The school described here is one that I can imagine out of a post apocalyptic future, but t is intended to exist in the story line with in the next ten years.
There is no subtext here, so don’t look for it. Everything is black and white, the theme is spelled out for you using the teeth of your enemies.
As an aside, did you ever notice that subtext is an anagram for buttsex?
Read into that all you want to!
--
xpost RawBlurb.com
This book may not be suitable for some readers. do not assume Pokemon or other cutesy text due to the name. this is a bloody violent unrelenting novel.
A quick summary-
Everyone knows some form of martial arts at Martin Luther King High School. This is where the locals get the nick name Kung Fu High. Defensive, offensive, a mishmash of street styles, suicide would be thinking you didn’t need to know anything in order to make it through a day. It is more like a “out-patient” prison psych-ward than a school. Avoiding a fight just means that the fight will come find you, and that you will be unprepared when it arrives. It is better if you go searching for the fight yourself, at least then you have a chance at catching it off guard.
Jen and her older brother Cue are both students at Kung Fu High. Their cousin is coming to stay with them after some concerns at home. Jimmy is a prize winning martial artist, who had promised his mother that he would no longer fight, after hospitalizing four men in self defense. Unfortunately for Jimmy, the people at Kung Fu High expect that he will be kicked in, and Jimmy being the champion he is, is a big target for a lot of fools to come after.
The thing about Kung Fu High is that you need to establish your boundaries very quickly. Your first day on campus, you need to find the biggest, baddest mofo on the quad and pick a fight, then you get “kicked in”, losing that fight. Getting your ass handed to you means that no one needs to take you down a peg as the new person, one needs to prove anything by hunting you down. It also shows that you cant just be pushed around, you are not afraid of taking a beating for the hell of it. Avoiding being kicked in means that it will be 10 times worse. a first day kick in could simply be a broken nose, avoidance could put you in the hospital.
Jimmy fails to establish this boundary.
Kung Fu High is a cesspool, unofficially run by drug lords and roving gangs. Cash goes to the city to keep the area less than nice, to keep the lights on, and to ensure that the cops only show up as figureheads when appearances are required.
Concerned parents can opt to take a child out of the school district and place them in private school, but what’s the point? Unless they move, they will still have to traverse the local streets and deal with the public school kids. Would you rather have a child that permanently eats through a straw, or one that might be able to avoid that fate with a little bit of extra-curricular face bashing? Better to let them slug it out in fear than guarantee they are screwed up for life.
This is one of the bloodiest books I have ever consumed. The descriptions of broken bones, contusions, bruises and trauma was enough to make me queasy at points. The school described here is one that I can imagine out of a post apocalyptic future, but t is intended to exist in the story line with in the next ten years.
There is no subtext here, so don’t look for it. Everything is black and white, the theme is spelled out for you using the teeth of your enemies.
As an aside, did you ever notice that subtext is an anagram for buttsex?
Read into that all you want to!
--
xpost RawBlurb.com
karaloft's review
1.0
I had to read this book for a school assignment and I hated it. Its plot wasn't great and overall it wasn't interesting enough to pull me into the story.
exorcismofemilyreed's review against another edition
3.0
This book was more of a 3.5⭐ for me.
Kung Fu High School is very creative. It's social commentary on school violence, but set in a world where that violence is pretty much encouraged, and isn't really punished. It was unique, and it definitely caused me to think.
I wish the action would have been a bit more spread out. Not much occurred during the first portion of the book, and then everything went crazy at the end. I'm also not a huge action reader, so I was a little overwhelmed with the second half.
I liked Jen, and it's always interesting to have a main character who makes questionable / odd choices (you'll have to read to find out). I appreciate that she really doesn't care what people think of her.
This is a perfect book for you if you like the high school setting, but want something much grittier and darker. I wouldn't classify this as YA. It's an adult book for sure.
Thank you to FSG Originals & Ryan Gattis for my copy of Kung Fu High School!
Kung Fu High School is very creative. It's social commentary on school violence, but set in a world where that violence is pretty much encouraged, and isn't really punished. It was unique, and it definitely caused me to think.
I wish the action would have been a bit more spread out. Not much occurred during the first portion of the book, and then everything went crazy at the end. I'm also not a huge action reader, so I was a little overwhelmed with the second half.
I liked Jen, and it's always interesting to have a main character who makes questionable / odd choices (you'll have to read to find out). I appreciate that she really doesn't care what people think of her.
This is a perfect book for you if you like the high school setting, but want something much grittier and darker. I wouldn't classify this as YA. It's an adult book for sure.
Thank you to FSG Originals & Ryan Gattis for my copy of Kung Fu High School!
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