ACID

In 2113, England is an independent republic ruled by ACID, a brutal and corrupt police force with unlimited power. Everyone treads lightly because even the slightest infraction can land you in jail. Jenna Strong knows she deserves to be in jail. She accidentally killed her parents in a fit of ill-thought-out teenage rebellion and feels crushing guilt. She readily accepts that the rest of her life will b spent behind bars, but the other male inmates make their interest in her apparent. The prison doctor befriends her and trains her in martial arts and self defense. A rebel group breaks her out of jail unexpectedly. Now, she has to figure out how to evade ACID while figuring out what is true and what are implanted lies manufactured by ACID.

ACID has a super cheesy, super action movie cover and I wasn't really expecting much from it. I was pleasantly surprised to find it was set in futuristic England and it was reflected in the descriptions and the language used by the characters. The world is interesting. People are arranged marriages called LifePartners and given jobs by the government. The most bizarre things are grounds of incarceration like spending time with someone of the opposite gender not your LifePartner, not watching the very biased and mostly false news, unauthorized relationships, smoking, drinking alcohol, and a huge list of other things, Jenna is an interesting protagonist. She doesn't have any super special powers or supernatural aid. Through grueling work, she made herself strong and skilled in fighting. Her emotional state is remarkable because she acknowledges the suckitude of her existence but doesn't sit around moping and crying all the time. She does what she has to: defending herself in jail, pretending to be someone else a bunch of times, and unwillingly working with a terrorist organization until she could escape.

Despite all these things I enjoyed, ACID suffers from some problems. The plot is a little too complicated and gets very muddy. Jenna has at least 3 different aliases that she goes by and changes her face at least 3 times. Speaking of which, the technology isn't well thought out. Complete facial surgery has her waking up pain free with no scars while a small operation to remove an implant injures her for days and leaves a scar. Coincidences are used to hold the plot together rather and it all seems way to convenient. The romance as lackluster and typical for YA books. Nothing special and not really needed in the novel.

ACID is a fun adventure of a book, but don't expect anything revolutionary. It's very typical for YA dystopia and follows the conventions of the genre rather well.

My rating: 3/5 fishmuffins