Hype can be an evil thing. You see a book all over the media, you see trailers for it, you hear people go on and on and on about a series and...you can't help it. Your expectations rise. It's gonna happen. It just is. So, after hearing all this praise for this book, hearing from friends and the internet alike that it's so good and the next big thing, I got hyped. Was it all it was cracked up to be? Well, let's just get into it.
Mare Barrow lives in the country of Norta, where the powerless Red blooded people are governed over by the almighty, super-powered Silver bloods. Mare makes her way through life, keeping her head down and avoiding the draft into war and stealing to get by. One day, as she stumbles upon a gathering of Silvers, something extraordinary happens: she's revealed to have powers. The Silvers swiftly take her in and masquerade her as one of their own, keeping her Red blood a secret and having her betrothed to one of the princes, Maven. But Mare has no desire to be a pet in the Silver world and seeks to liberate her Red brethren by joining the Scarlet Guard, but she's surrounded by those who would harm her and seek to destroy her and Mare must play her hand carefully or face the ultimate punishment.
Sounds pretty exciting doesn't it? Well, that's what I thought too...before I read it and discovered that this was...yet again...another girl-starts-rebellion story. Now, that alone is not enough to make a book bad or even mediocre, it's really not. What will kill it for your story is how unbelievably slow the pacing of this book is and how much you do not care about the characters. Katniss Everdeen is someone you root for because you want her to get back to her sister (in the first book anyway). Triss Prior is someone you root for because she's fighting against what she's been told is her destined path and is walking the course she truly wants. Mare Barrow....is sloppy seconds compared to these girls. Seriously, I can't remember what it is about her that I wanted to root for. She's forced to leave her family but...she barely gives them a second thought. She's forced into an arranged marriage she doesn't want but...she's cool with it. She's got both the rebels and the Silvers telling her what to do and how to behave and...she just goes along with it. She comes up with nothing on her own, is that special-snowflake-something-or-other that I hate and she's just so bland. If the character isn't invested, then I'm not invested. Simple as that.
There's almost no other characters in this book that I haven't seen done a thousand times the same way. Cal and Maven both serve as the brooding, silent love interests with the BFF Kilorn dangling over in third-wheel (or in this case fourth-wheel) territory. You have your ruthless, nasty, pain-in-the-butt mean girl, Evangeline, who's also a love rival and bully and hates our protagonist for absolutely no reason whatsoever except that she's the mean girl trope and that's what she's supposed to do. You have your ignorant king, your poisonous queen, your passionate revolutionaries who blur together so much you forget who is who...etc. It's taking all my willpower just to remember the names of these people because they all just left so little impact. If I make it through and entire book and can't remember anyone or at least come away with a character I want to root for...we have a problem.
Now, the Silver classes is clearly where a lot of the creative effort when into with this story (and the soap opera drama, but I'll get to that later). They're divided into houses...I mean districts...I mean factions...I mean categories-to-fashion-into-a-Facebook-personality-test...I mean houses, each with their own X-men power, from controlling water to fire to metal to reading minds and blah, blah, blah. Now, the fact that they're all divided up doesn't bother me (heck, even I've done that in my own story) but what does bother me is that there are too many of them. They're not even clearly labeled either. They just have random nicknames and we're supposed to instantly know who is who and what is what and...you can't. There's just too much to remember. If you're going to have groups of people with different personality traits, powers, or whatever anything over 10 is too much (and yes, this includes the 12 districts of Panem. All these years later and I still can't remember what all the districts are responsible for). I swear, I lost count of all the Silver powers and, judging from the end of the book, there are only more to come. How are we supposed to care about these characters when I can't even remember what they do?
Last rant, I promise. The moral this book wants us to know by the end is that "anyone can betray anyone," (seriously, it repeats this phrase like five times in the last three chapters). There's a lot of backstabbing and plotting and scheming, especially in the third act and...I didn't care. Seriously, I don't care about any of this stuff. And yet, the book just keeps piling the baggage on us. "I'm going to tell you of the tragic story of my sister and make avenging her your responsibility." I don't care. "I've been living my whole life one way and if I don't do something about it things will never change." I don't care. "There's discrimination within the discrimination within the discrimination and we have to do something about it." I...don't...care! We almost never see anything of consequence happen, so we have no motivation. We can't get invested in the futures of these characters because we don't know these characters. If what you're going for is "anyone can betray anyone" it should end with "but if nobody is invested than it doesn't make for a good story."
Final Verdict
As you can guess, I didn't like this book. But...it didn't make me angry or anything. I was just really, really bored. I couldn't get invested in the bland characters, the recycled plot or its "twists", and the world was too vague to get our attention. I finished this book last night and completely forgot about it when I woke up this morning...it left that little of an impact on me. Still, there are some people out there who might find some joy out of it. If you don't care about the other dystopias out there that are just like this (or haven't read them at all) and you want to give this a shot, feel free...just save your cash and check it out at your local library.
Have you read the book? What did you think? Comment below and share your thoughts. Please make sure to Follow Midnight Readings for instant updates. Have a book you'd like me to read or would like to make a recommendation? Contact me on goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/65448711-michelle-beer
Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Powerless-Shelley-Miller/dp/1543482546/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519062043&sr=8-1&keywords=powerless+by+shelley+miller
Xlibris: https://www.xlibris.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-001175242
Next Time: You can spend your life running away from fairy tales, but they'll eventually catch you...
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