Tagged: lance erlick

The Rebel Trap by Lance Erlick

The Rebel Trap by Lance Erlick(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

Voices in sixteen-year-old Annabelle Scott’s head aren’t God or signs she’s going mad—yet. Despite being a Mech Warrior recruit, she rebels against her female-dominated régime by not only refusing to kill Morgan, a handsome boy she’s attracted to, but also helping him escape.

Annabelle’s commander gives her auditory implants and contact cameras for an undercover assignment to investigate her corrupt police captain. Morgan hacks the implants to plead for her help in freeing his brother. As a pawn in a bigger game, she wants to help Morgan yet needs to discover the link between an attempted assassination of her adoptive mom, her police captain, and the geek institute that holds Morgan’s brother. Can she do so without falling into a trap that could destroy her family and get her killed?

[Full disclosure: I received a free ebook in conjunction with the blog tour in exchange for an honest review.]

The Rebel Trap is the sequel to The Rebel Within but is actually the third in chronological order in Lance Erlick’s rebel series.  (Although within the book universe it’s actually book #2.)  Thankfully for me, you don’t have to read the first installment about Annabelle to understand this book.  It seems that the whole series is quite self-contained so that you can start at the end like I did or start at the beginning.

What I really liked about the book was the characters.  Of course your impressions of many of them are biased because you’re seeing them largely through Annabelle, but I like how Lance Erlick gave us insights into people around the main character, including her sister Janine and her adoptive mother.  But of course Annabelle was my favourite character.  She’s tough and determined to succeed in life but there’s a slight hitch when she gets auditory implants and contacts that allow her commander to see and hear everything she does for a mission.  There’s a lack of privacy and then there’s having your boss see and hear everything you do.

Still, she finds a rather interesting way around it as Morgan constantly hounds her to help him rescue his little brother.  And that really showcases the complexity of Annabelle: she wants to help Morgan’s little brother because she knows imprisoning young boys and men for their gender is wrong but at the same time she needs to root out the corruption taking hold in her society.  Did I mention that she’s also caught in a little power war between the commander of the Mech Corps and the commander of the police?  Like all teenagers, Annabelle does angst a fair bit, but unlike some her angst is completely deserved at this point so it’s not actually annoying for the reader.

The only thing I didn’t really like about this book was the repetitiveness of the plot.  It seemed to follow a pattern: Sam would tell Annabelle not to do something, she’d do it, Sam would be happy because she discovered new evidence against Commander Voss and Scarlatti.  This was sort of understandable the first few times because Annabelle was figuring things out and really blundering through the whole ‘subtle’ part of the missions, but it got kind of annoying after the fourth or fifth time.  Unfortunately, this constant repetition made the plot kind of predictable.  I knew how it was going to end and I saw pretty much all of the twists and turns because of course everything Annabelle tries to do as an intern cop is made to trip her up.

Still, despite my dislike of the whole repetitiveness of the thing, the plot was at least reasonably fast-paced.  It was slow enough for Lance Erlick to develop his characters properly but not so slow as to bog the reader down.  Not all of the characters’ motivations are clear in the beginning (although you can probably guess if you try hard enough) so it does keep Annabelle and the readers on their toes until about the middle of the novel where the motives become clearer.

The characters really are the strength of The Rebel Trap, though, so even if the plot was totally awful (which it really isn’t) I would definitely recommend this book.  They’re ambiguous enough to be real but not so ambiguous that you feel like their actions come from nowhere.  It’s a delicate balance and Lance Erlick does it well.  So if you’re into dystopias with flipped societies (women are superior in this one as opposed to men), then I would recommend The Rebel Trap to you.

I give this book 3.5/5 stars.

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Kindle Blast: The Rebel Series by Lance Erlick

As a pawn in a bigger game, who and what can Annabelle trust?
Publication Date: October 1, 2014
Genre: Young Adult Science Fiction

Voices in 16-year-old Annabelle Scott’s head aren’t God or signs she’s going mad—yet. Despite being a Mech Warrior recruit, she rebels against her post-Second Civil War society by not only refusing to kill Morgan, a boy she’s attracted to, but also helping him to escape. After officially kicking her out of the program, Commander Samantha Hernandez gives Annabelle auditory implants and contact cams for an undercover assignment to investigate her corrupt police captain. Morgan hacks the implants to plead for her help in freeing his brother from a heavily guarded geek institute.

Unable to get either her commander or Morgan out of her head, Annabelle can’t confide in her adoptive mom, her beloved sister, or anyone else. While this rift tears at her bond to her sister, circumstance prevents her from searching for her birth mother or who tried to assassinate her adoptive mom.

As a pawn in a bigger game, who and what can Annabelle trust, including whether her mission is the commander’s vendetta? Can she find a way to help Morgan and discover the link between the attempted assassination, the geek institute, and her corrupt police captain without leading Morgan into a trap, being exiled and separated from her family, or getting herself and those she cares about killed?

The Rebel Trap was written as a standalone story, but also follows Annabelle’s adventures from The Rebel Within.

 

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Publication Date: March 25, 2013
Sixteen-year-old Annabelle Scott lives under the iron rule of a female-dominated régime that forces males to fight to the death to train the military elite. When pressed into service as a mechanized warrior to capture escaped boys, Annabelle stays true to herself by helping some escape. Her defiance endangers everyone she loves and thrusts her to a place of impossible life and death decisions.
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Publication Date: June 12, 2013
Geo Shaw is a young Outlands frontiersman and a sworn enemy of the female-dominated Federal Union. Nineteen-year-old Annabelle Scott is a Union Mechanized Warrior charged with killing Outland rebels. During a skirmish, she should kill Geo but instead lets him escape, which mystifies them both. In a political power play, Annabelle is given to the Outland Warlord as a bride. She has no other choice than to get Geo’s help—but now there’s a bounty on him and his father. Betrayed by their own people, Annabelle and Geo have to overcome mutual distrust to rely on each other in order to survive.
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I won. I lost. I’m out. I’m in. I cannot tell a soul. It was enough to spin my head, to make me wish I was back in that zoo of a high school I just left.
My thoughts darkened with the implications of what I’d done and the commitment I’d just made. I hurried out of Commander Hernandez’s sparse office; even the khaki-colored corridors looked darker than I remembered only an hour before. The drab lobby of the Tenn-tucky Mechanized Warrior compound brimmed with sister warriors, a gauntlet I had to squeeze through on my way out. Yet, I could no longer call them “sister” anything.
“Loser!” someone yelled. It sounded like one of Dara’s girls. Defeating the amazon bully in the mech tournament final hadn’t silenced her, or her posse.
“Hey, Annabelle,” Dara yelled, “how’s it feel to wash out?” She stood a head taller than the other girls like some ruling monarch.
Joke’s on you. I took deep, steady breaths while I marched toward the exit. Don’t get into a fight, I reminded myself. That was what she wanted, bringing up how, after the tournament, I’d refused to kill my male opponent in the separate arena final.
Hot, locker-room bodies surrounded me, sweat-soaked from their own arena fights to the death against boys pumped up with steroids and chemical enhancers to make the challenge even tougher. Some two dozen male corpses lay in the arena morgue, testament to the training and bravery of these recruits. Unlike them, I couldn’t bring myself to kill Morgan for sport, even when I had him pinned in a chokehold. For that failure, they took my title and kicked me out of the Mech Corps. Well, to hell with them.
 
Things weren’t that simple, though. They never were for me.
“You don’t have what it takes,” Dara shouted. The amazon’s large face tightened like a monstrous fist. She growled, “Weakness finally caught up with you.”
“They’ll strip away your title,” scrawny Margarite said from behind Dara.
I inched forward through the crowd, my eyes fixed on the tinted, bulletproof door that promised freedom. Don’t fight. Only a few more feet.
 
Dara stepped in front of me to block my exit. “You know what that means? I’ll have the title that’s rightfully mine. All that work for nothing. Sucks, doesn’t it?”
 

 

Not like getting a title you didn’t earn.


 
Brandy, my closest mech friend, cowered in the corner, face hidden beneath auburn curls. She brushed the hair aside and glanced up, eyes pleading. I hated letting her down. During training, she’d latched onto me as her lifeline. I sensed she wanted to talk, to get answers, but I was a pariah. I embarrassed the entire program by winning the tournament and the arena contests, yet disqualifying myself on a technicality.
I wanted to reassure Brandy, and thank her for being a good friend, but that would make her life hell with her sister recruits. I couldn’t do that to her. I looked for a path around Dara, one I could take without stirring a fight with one who needed no provoking.
“What ya do, fall in love with that redhead?” Rox yelled. The dark-complexioned loner must have decided to align herself with Dara now that I was out.
The jibe bit hard. Yeah, I’d like to get to know Red—Morgan. Even if I didn’t, I won’t kill for sport. Maybe if I hadn’t saved him several times before the arena match, I might have acted differently, but that wasn’t it.
For the past six weeks as a mech trainee, I’d counted these girls as friends, with the exception of Dara. Now, their scornful looks reminded me of high school. Escaping at 16 had been a gift. Now I longed to return to a cage I understood.
I held my head high, squeezed between Dara and Margarite, and pushed the weaker girl out of the way. I ached to yell out the truth, but Commander Hernandez had been clear and insistent: “Tell no one you’re still in the program.”
Instead, I kept moving and endured jabs to my arms, already inflamed from my fight. Morgan had been a tougher competitor than Dara, and almost killed me twice. Yet, I couldn’t hurt him. Stay calm.
Dara grabbed my arm and pulled me back. “I’m not finished with you.”
“Yes, you are.” I yanked free and pushed through the glass door into sticky heat. Haze drifted in from Knoxville. I was tempted to take my mech-cycle and race to the Outland border to make sure Morgan crossed safely. Then the mechs would follow me and catch him for sure. Patience, Annabelle. Besides, the commander took my electric cycle when she officially kicked me out of the program.
The forest-camouflage guardhouse across the concrete clearing seemed miles away. My adoptive mom and her electric sedan weren’t waiting for me outside the gate, where the commander had arranged for her to pick me up. Nor was Mom’s car among the line of other cars and buses leaving the arena parking lot. Sweat soaked my neck and beaded up on my forehead.
On unsteady legs, I moved toward the gate. It felt like nightmares where I reach for my birth mother while mech-warriors tear me from her arms and send her to prison for trying to help my dad escape. That happened when I was three. Yet the horrid ache returned to me nightly as a fresh wound. To spare me from an institution Mom adopted me and raised me as her own.
I picked up my pace to get away from the taunts that echoed from Dara and her crew on the steps behind me. I had to get outside the compound, which reminded me of a prison with its high concrete walls, concertina wire, and hidden cams.
Still shaken by the mess I’d gotten myself into, I also reeled over having just witnessed someone try to assassinate Tenn-tucky State Senator Cora Scott, my adoptive mom, in the middle of my life-and-death struggle with Morgan. What a cluster. I prayed no one would connect his escape to Mom or me.
She still wasn’t outside the gate.
While getting out of here sounded great, I couldn’t face Mom’s disappointment at my failure or relief that I was out of the mech program. I wasn’t out. Yet. But I couldn’t tell her. I didn’t need Janine’s probing questions either, or her attempts to comfort me as if I were the younger sister. At least with me officially out of the program, she wouldn’t feel the need to join the mechs to follow me.
Where are you, Mom?
 
I reached the guardhouse. Still no car.
The stocky guard with coal-black hair stepped out of the shadows and blocked my exit. Though shorter, she had the commander’s solid build and looked ready to take my head off—me, the true winner of the Spring Mech Tournament. She probably could. Even though I’d gone through grueling mech qualifications, I hadn’t completed my training yet.
I hung my head. “Sorry, Sandy.”
She grabbed my arm and spun me around to face the building. “You will be. Commander wants you back in her office.” She pushed me toward the mech building and that gauntlet of angry recruits.
“What’s going on?” I looked behind and still couldn’t see Mom’s car.
“Don’t cause me any grief,” Sandy said. Her thick fingers dug into my forearm, making me gasp.
She pushed me back to the building. “Whatever it is, I suggest you humble yourself. The commander has never recalled a washed-out recruit before.”
“Come on, Sandy, give me something.”
Dara, Rox, and Margarite glowered at me from the top step. They blocked the door.
“I don’t know, but good luck,” Sandy said. “For the record, I had my money on you.”
She pushed me up the steps. “Everyone out of the way.”
Dara looked like a giant next to Sandy, but the great amazon stepped aside. Sandy dragged me along the khaki-colored corridor back toward the commander’s office. My eyes watered. It was like getting a pardon from prison, only to have the judge reverse her decision.
“Haven’t you had enough?” Dara yelled after me. “Had to come back for more?”
I dropped my gaze to the concrete floor. Moving toward freedom had given me courage. Now, as my nerve bled away, I could only imagine what had gone wrong.
<Don’t be alarmed,> a muted bass voice said directly into my skull.
You know how when someone says think fast, you can’t? My brain scrambled to make sense of this male voice deep inside my head, given that I’d never heard a masculine tone until six weeks ago.
Sandy tugged me forward. “Don’t keep the commander waiting.”
I pulled back. Morgan, what are you doing in my head? It felt like the mech com-link that allowed you to hear another’s projected thoughts. I couldn’t imagine how to turn the blasted thing off, or how to talk to him without Sandy overhearing. I couldn’t let her or the commander think I was crazy on top of everything else. I considered that possibility.
<I haven’t much time,> Morgan said. <My brother hacked your com-link’s auditory implant. Your escape plan failed. Mechs are rounding up the other boys. Your mom’s in danger.>
I froze. I wanted to see Morgan’s face. Yet I didn’t trust all this craziness inside me, as if I wanted more than just to see him. His tone did sound comforting, though, the only really friendly voice since I ran the gauntlet.
Sandy yanked me forward.
<Sorry for being such a bother. I need your help,> Morgan said somewhere inside my skull.
I followed Sandy, shook my head, and mouthed, “No.” As if somehow, he could see that. I’d done my bit. I’d tried to help him escape.
The gravity of my situation sank in. Had Commander Hernandez caught the nurse helping the boys, or connected the escape to Mom? The entire idea had been stupid, a rushed effort because I really liked Morgan, despite having to fight him. I should have had a better plan, but I was not a planner.

 

Lance Erlick grew up in various parts of the United States and Europe. He took to stories as his anchor and was inspired by his father’s engineering work on cutting-edge aerospace projects to look to the future. He studied creative writing at Northwestern University and University of Iowa.


He writes science fiction, dystopian and young adult stories and likes to explore the future implications of social and technological trends. He’s the author of The Rebel Within, The Rebel Trap, and Rebels Divided, three books in the Rebel series. In those stories, he flips traditional exploitation to explore the effects of a world that discriminates against males and the consequences of following conscience for those coming of age.