Editorial | Review: ACID

***** SPOILER ALERT *****

This review will be discussing plot points which may be considered spoilers. Consider yourselves warned.

I have gotten my hot little hands on a copy of Acid, the first novel from author Emma Pass.  The author is from the Midlands, UK, and her European roots come out in certain word choices and, of course, measurements.  Fortunately for Therefore I Geek readers, I have read the book and am here to lay out the good, the bad, and the ugly about it.

The Good: The main character in this book is one Jenna Strong, who is in a maximum security, male only prison at the tender age of seventeen for parricide.  The book is set in 2113, in a UK that is completely cut off from the rest of the world.  A lackadaisical government has been thrown out of power by an anti-terrorist arm of the military/police force called ACID (Agency for Crime Investigation and Defense) and a police state has been in place for about 100 years.  As far as the good of this book goes, the well designed acronym is pretty much all it has to offer.  That, and the perfect use of the subjunctive tense.

The Bad:  The first chapter of the book is intended to give the reader the impression that this chick is rough and tough, and can handle herself in prison.  The entire book is written in the present progressive tense, which bothered me until I somewhat reconciled this choice with the fact that it was also written in the first person.  The first couple of chapters read like a screenplay, with too much description of movement and surroundings.  The dialogue is choppy.  At this point, this book is a half step above fan fiction.  In fact, I was deep into chapter three before I found a paragraph that actually felt convincing.  Chapter three also had a little too much “tech talk.”  I started to feel as though the author got this far and realized that her story did not feel futuristic enough, and so she awkwardly crammed in some gadgets with unconvincing names.

Periodically throughout the book—without much rhyme or reason, except that they come at the end of a chapter—there are articles from what is supposed to be the news source of the time, transcripts from official conversations, and personal letters.  These are not as cute as Emma Pass thinks that they are, and someone should fire the copy editor of this fictional newspaper.  Usually these are used as a plot device to give the reader more insight into the story, which turns them into boring, poorly written, data dumps.  Perhaps the author thinks she is being innovative, but this just comes across as lazy writing.

Also, there are multiple plot twist reveals and mini-climaxes throughout the book.  This would actually be a good thing if it were not for the fact that they are all set up very awkwardly.  The story is written in the first person, so in order to keep the reader in the dark, the author must withhold information from Jenna Strong as well.  Unfortunately, the excuses the author invents to do this are unbelievable and just plain bad.

Several of the plot devices have been blatantly stolen from other authors, such as the ACID enforced requirement that all citizens must watch a minimum of five hours per day of government controlled television, which comes directly from Ray Bradbury.  At other points, material appears to be pulled straight from popular TV series, such as Firefly, and recent books/movies, such as The Hunger Games.

In order to maintain her anonymity as she plots government overthrow—or at least the downfall of the guy who did in her parents, Jenna and her love interest go through three or four name changes (I honestly lost count).  The author seemed to lose track of these also, because at one point the love interest was going by the pseudonym Declan, but he is referred to as Mikey for several paragraphs, before returning to the name Declan.

In order to create some drama and conflict, the male love interest erupts into an unnecessarily violent outburst of anger at Jenna.  Granted, this did drive the plot into the final climax, but it felt forced.  By this point, I was just writing, “ugh” in the margin periodically.

The Ugly:  By the time I reached page twenty five, I wrote in the margin, “This book is starting to feel like propaganda.”  Whether I agree with the opinion or not, I hate propaganda.  In fact, I wrote a list of topics that the author is attempting to preach to her audience:

• The class divide is dangerous and evil.
• Law enforcement wants to spy on people’s private lives.
• The media is good, but the government wants to control it, which is bad.
• The state wants to enforce the heterosexual lifestyle by completely outlawing homosexual relationships.
• Law enforcement wants to establish a police state
• Police state notwithstanding, beware revolutionaries too, because Lenin.
• Books are REALLY, REALLY GOOD, and therefore, no one will have them in the future (with an underscore that books are good because they are harder for the government to control)

This book is basically a Frankenstein’s monster of pieces of inspiration stolen from other authors (who did it better), cobbled together with a loose stitching of pretentious moral outrage.  Add shoddy writing to this, and this book is not worth the paper on which it is printed.  Originally set to come out on April 14, this book was already released on March 11, and is available in hardback, paperback, and as a digital download.  I give this book one Death Star.