Format: Hardcover, 400 pages
Release Date: October 4, 2016
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Source: Publisher
Genre: YA / Science Fiction
The first book in the fast-paced action-adventure, The Rift Uprising trilogy—an enthralling mix of speculative fiction and military thriller—in which a young soldier comes to question the monsters she’s trained to fight against . . . and the monsters she fights forSeventeen-year-old Ryn Whittaker is a Citadel: an elite, enhanced soldier specially chosen to guard a Rift, a mysterious and dangerous portal to alternate Earths scientists cannot control or close. Trained from the age of fourteen, Ryn can run faster, jump farther, and fight better than a Navy SEAL—which is good when you’re not sure if a laser-wielding Neanderthal or an axe-wielding Viking is trying to make it through the Rift and into her world.
But the teenager’s military conditioning and education have not prepared her for the boy who crosses through—a confused young man, seemingly lost and alone. Because while there’s an immediate physical attraction, it’s his intelligence and curiosity that throws Ryn off balance. The stranger asks disturbing questions about the Rift that Ryn herself has never considered—questions that lead her to wonder if everything about her life and what she’s been told these past six years has been a lie. Are the Rifts as dangerous as her leaders say? Should her people really try to close them . . . or learn how to travel through them?
The Rift Uprising is the first installment in author Amy S. Foster's The Rift Uprising Trilogy. Set in a not too distant future, the story features 17-year old Ryn Whittaker. Ryn is the leader of Beta Team, a group of super-soldiers who have been trained since an early age to protect the world from invaders who show up through Rifts. Rifts are portals to an infinite number of other Earths. Rifts that manage to cobbler all sorts of strange and wondrous beings and animals that drop them on Ryn's world.
Ryn and her teammates are based out of Washington State (Bonneville Military Camp). At Fourteen, Ryn and her teammates chips, implanted in their heads, were activated. For 3 years Ryn has stood guard watching for what comes out of the Rift. You never know what may come out of the Rift. One day it might be the hated Karekins, the next it might be Vikings, the day after that it might be curious beings that could be Edward Cullen and his family. Or, if you are really lucky, you may see a unicorn or dinosaur come through.
Ryn and her fellow teammates Boone, Violet, and Henry have amazing abilities. They heal quicker, they have increased stamina, they can run longer and faster, they have eidetic memory, they learn languages quickly, and they share a huge secret that nobody outside of the ARC can understand. Their families actually believe they are attending a higher accelerated education. But, there is a downfall. They can pretty much never have sex for fear of hurting, or killing their partners thanks to a maddening psychosis known as Bloodlust.
Ryn has never once broken protocol for any reason. But, after a boy named Ezra is dropped through the rift, things change. Ezra's arrival triggers something in Ryn that leads her to start questioning everything about the Allied Rift Coalition (ARC), Rifts, Roones, (a highly evolved humanoid species that created certain technologies), the Village where Immigrants are sent and are never allowed to leave, and how she and the other Citadels are not allowed to touch anyone for fear of being swallowed up whole by the bloodlust.
One could say that there is an instance of instalove between Ryn and Ezra. Yes, I've said how much I hate instalove. An author recently told me to think of instalove situations as though you are the adolescent whose hormones are just getting charged up. There you see a boy, or girl for that matter, who just gets your heart beating faster than the engine of a race car. Not like that has every happened to me. Nope. What? Don't believe me? :::evil grin:: The preoccupation of having sex in this book took away from my overall enjoyment of the story.
This story is filled with references to movies and TV shows like Ender's Game, Twilight, Transformers, and Buffy the Vampire slayer. Ryn does get away with a whole lot of shenanigans in this book that others probably would have been court-martialed or worse. As this is the first book in the trilogy, there is a whole lot of name dropping, and background static. Some is necessary to understand what Ryn and her fellow Citadel members have been put through. The rest is just the line that crosses what makes this more of an adult themed book, than a young adult one.
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