What a ride it’s been! We went from Murder Hogwarts to Magic Spartacus to this, a dark, Tolkienian triumph I’m going to dub Return of the Goth. Surprised? Me too. But we shouldn’t be. Jay Kristoff may write with some pop turns of phrase (and filthy cussing), but his ambitions have always been Epic with …

“It’s like Romeo and Juliet meets Mad Max meets X-Men with a little bit of Blade Runner cheering from the sidelines.” With a tagline like that, there was no way I wasn’t going to pick up Lifel1k3, even though the leetspeak title made me wince. But the problem with comparing yourself to an iconic work …

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to your newest obsession. There’s murder. A lot of murder. And there’s mayhem. So much mayhem. Sex and drugs and–well, okay, there isn’t any rock and roll, but there are a bunch of teenagers who do rock. And roll. And poison, stab, seduce, and steal. From each other, from the faculty …