EXTERNAL FORCES (The Laws of Motion #1)

4.67 Stars from 12 GoodReaders

EXTERNAL FORCES by Deborah Rix is a book you are definitely going to have to check out if you are into dystopic YA lit. The writing is great and the book falls into the page-turner category, having both interesting concepts, romance, and action.

Backstory:

The backstory is that the world has been torn apart by an asteroid. There is flooding, starvation, and worse, widespread genetic mutations because of a virus that got loose.  Our heroine, Jess, is on the 'good' side of a humongous wall.  She's sixteen and things might be okay except it looks like she might be 'one of them'.  A deviant.

The religious zealots, who currently run the government, didn't spot any defects at birth and Jess wasn't culled like baby sister; but when she turns 17 there's another set of genetic tests and Jess is afraid that this time she won't pass.

To avoid the test and the claustrophobic society she lives in, Jess falsifies her age and gets into the military, taking her best boy-bud with her.  Her problem then is what to do about her growing deviancy.

Themes:
Identity and coming of age; bullying; first love; fitting in;  violence and right-and-wrong.

My Thoughts:

While there is not a ton of new ground covered here, EXTERNAL FORCES is so well written that you won't care.

In some respects the book reminds me of the Divergent series, with maybe some Partials thrown in.  There's some cool military training at the beginning, plus we have a trainer who becomes the love interest.

Where this book differs from the previously mentioned YA series is that it has much better prose.  Divergent was exciting and entertaining, but the actual word-smithing was nothing special.

What I LIKED:

--Brilliant world-building.

--I loved that Jess' best friend is gay.  I thought Rix handled Jess and Jay's interest in boys well.

--I thought the handling of the military training was also brilliant.

--The plotting was well done.

What I DIDN'T LIKED:

--I really liked the romance at first, but it soon came to dominate the story too much.  I know most readers --YA or Adult-- won't feel this way, but I got tired of the puppy-dog eyes and the repeated "oh hell"-we-just-got-interrupted-so-that-we-didn't-mistakenly-have-sex thing.

RECOMMEND to who/whom:

I'd recommend this book to anyone who liked I AM NUMBER FOUR, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, BLOOD RED ROAD, ENCLAVE, or any number of other dystopic books and series.  EXTERNAL FORCES is smartly done and full of both intelligent ideas and action.

As the reviewer at Kirkus said, it's  A complex, intriguing YA sci-fi adventure.

However, that said, I don't think the entire series is likely to appeal to curmudgeonly adults like myself.  There are YA series like those from Tamora Pierce, Suzanne Collins, and Rae Carson that are perfect reads for almost all adults that like fantasy/scifi/alt-hist, but EXTERNAL FORCES doesn't fall into that group. 

**4.5 STARS** for everyone else

**4 Stars** for jaded old me

Pam~

EXTERNAL FORCES  
(The Laws of Motion #1)
 by Deborah Rix

no reading info available
Page Count:  268
nicely priced for Kindle


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