C. B. Lee

In a world of meta-humans with fantastic powers, it's hard to be the muggle and feel useless. However, Emma Robledo is clever and detail-oriented, always coming up with a plan of attack to move forward. While not trying to save the world/their nation, Emma also wrestles with her feelings of attraction or lack thereof in a sincere questioning arc (as I haven't really had this experience, it doesn't seem like my place to determine whether or not it's authentic, but! it does feel like it progressed during the book at a natural pace). As far as I can tell as an outsider, this feels like good ace-spec representation, something much-needed for young readers who might not have the words/tools yet to describe how they feel (or, for grownups new to the concepts too!)

The end is a hopeful note, but still cliffhanger-y- can't wait to see how C.B. Lee wraps this quartet up!

The most minor of distracting thoughts: I don't really have a good grasp on how fast vehicles can move in the future of 2123, so while our heroes use abandoned pre-Collective highways to get between places, I still sort of feel like it would take time to go from Nevada up into Idaho-ish, then to Louisiana and finally New York? Plus Canada? Travel time is mentioned, but not dwelt upon because otherwise we'd have the ceaseless camping of HP 7, but our characters sure do move around a lot.… (mer)

Probably would rate this 4.5? I liked it better than Not Your Sidekick (think I got used to the present tense as well), probably because I got to see the characters I learned about grow and develop.

The first fifth or so of this book recaps Not Your Sidekick, but from Bells perspective, though we also get to see him go to Meta-Human Training at an undisclosed location in what was likely former British Columbia. I really appreciated this part of the world building given what we learned about how meta-humans are organized at the end of NYS, and was curious about the training bit (Christine's parents donating to put her in the program was unintentionally resonant with the news story about wealthy parents paying a fixer to pretend their students were athletes/etc. to get into elite schools, but that's a side tangent).

I am cis, so I don't know how well Bells' PoV speaks to the trans experience, but he gets a really great line about 2/3rds through the book where he tells an enemy that it doesn't matter if his shapeshifting is taken away, in his heart and his head he knows who he is. There's discussion of a character possibly being ace or aro, which feels like a great way to introduce concepts to a teenage audience.

Throwing this in my Idahome tag as well because at one point, characters walk from a shelter in Middleton to the Bitterroot hovertrain station, which I assume is likely in the Bitterroot mountain range...… (mer)