POWERLESS

A 16-year-old from a family of superpowered people finds herself on the outs when she fails to develop powers of her own in Pretty’s YA SF novel.

Hanna Super is an anomaly in her appropriately named family. Her deceased mother, two sisters, and two brothers all developed superpowers by the time they were 16, her current age. Her powerlessness means she is left out of, among other things, her family’s vigilante activities. Her older sister, Maria, can control fire. Her brother Toomas has superstrength, and her other brother, Maksim, has the ability to transfer pain from his own (usually self-inflicted) injuries to someone else. Finally, her youngest sister, Marleen, can dissolve anything she touches. Struggling to find her place, Hanna devotes her time to studying the gene that causes the development of powers, discovered by her wealthy scientist father, Artem Super—whose approval she strongly desires. After a lab accident, however, Hanna is cast out of her father’s home. Alone for the first time, she stumbles into an alliance with the mysterious Brotherhood, the group positioned as Artem’s antagonistic rival. The author effectively builds the story’s world (it’s set in an alternate version of Sudovia, an independent former member nation of the Soviet Union) through the natural-feeling incorporation of details via conversations or flashbacks. One particularly clever instance occurs in a flashback to Hanna and Maria’s childhood games involving maps of Kakslinna: (“Maria’s favorite map was the most recent one, where she’d drawn little, red Xs for where to find the best mini pancakes, cinnamon pastries, and cherry pies”); Pretty uses the scene not only to provide depth to the sisters’ relationship, but also to unobtrusively convey details about the history and geography of the setting. Ultimately, the author delivers an exciting superhero story with series potential.

A strong superhero yarn for fans of the X-Men and Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows.