By: Danielle Abril | Staff Writer
“She is the embodiment of a bad decision. The twin of danger and desire. The fine line between deadly and divine. And I can feel myself drowning.”
It’s a broadcasted game of children killing children for public entertainment, like Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games. It’s a competitive tournament of battles and mazes to test one’s powers, like J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And it’s a castle-set love affair between a common girl and the son of her enemy who is also the king, like Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass.
In January 2023, Lauren Roberts released Powerless, the first novel within her Young Adult fantasy trilogy under the same title. Since then, Roberts has released the series’ second installment, Reckless, this past July, along with a novella featuring another character’s point of view titled Powerful. Readers are just six months away from the release of the completion of the series Fearless, which is set for April 2025.
Roberts sets the scene in Ilya, a fantasy land in which all people must be one of two things: Elite or Ordinary. After the Plague, Ilyians were either gifted with abilities (Elites) or outcast due to their lack thereof (Ordinaries). The king’s mission is to prevent the powerless individuals from weakening society, so he lies to his people by claiming their normalcy is a disease to the land, and that they must be rid of.
The king does so by sending his second son Kai—who has been brutally trained to be the kingdom’s future Enforcer his entire life—to do his dirty work. Along with torturing captives for information, Kai also kills Ordinary people hidden within society and banishes their secret-keepers to the Scorches.
In comes Paedyn, an 18 year old girl living in the slums of the Loot amongst the Mundanes (Elites, but with weak powers) stealing shillings to get by. No one besides the only family she has left—her best friend Adena—knows her secret: that she is not a Mundane with psychic abilities, but rather an Ordinary fraud.
After saving Kai’s life while unaware of his status, Paedyn is selected to compete in the Purging Trials against none other than Kai himself. Despite feeling set up for failure and like the odds of keeping up her facade are stacked against her, Paedyn forms unlikely bonds with the future Enforcer…and his older brother, Kitt the Heir.
Unlike most books within the fantasy world, Powerless features a dual point of view (POV), engaging readers with the thoughts of both Paedyn and Kai, and opening up a wider lens to understand the characters and creating that much more suspense. For readers piqued by romance, this dual POV allows Roberts to showcase the emotional conflicts the characters suffer due to their inner battles with romantic feelings they aren’t supposed to have.
Roberts’ captivating story of grief, pride, fear, love and courage is a quick read, which meddled its way not only onto the New York Times Bestselling List, but also onto TikTok’s “BookTok,” and rightfully so. While some may be waiting around for the third installment, others should jump at this opportunity to get hooked on this new series in the next six months to join in on the fun…or heartbreak.
Book rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Cover from Publisher, Simon & Schuester.
