Sovereign: Nemesis - Book Two

314 pages

Published July 25, 2017 by Diversion Books.

ISBN:
978-1-68230-823-3
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5 stars (3 reviews)

Only nine months after her debut as the superhero Dreadnought, Danny Tozer is already a scarred veteran. Protecting a city the size of New Port is a team-sized job and she's doing it alone. Between her newfound celebrity and her demanding cape duties, Dreadnought is stretched thin, and it's only going to get worse. When she crosses a newly discovered billionaire supervillain, Dreadnought comes under attack from all quarters. From her troubled family life to her disintegrating friendship with Calamity, there's no lever too cruel for this villain to use against her. She might be hard to kill, but there's more than one way to destroy a hero. Before the war is over, Dreadnought will be forced to confront parts of herself she never wanted to acknowledge. And behind it all, an old enemy waits in the wings, ready to unleash a plot that will scar the world forever.

4 editions

Powerful (ha ha, get it) Storytelling

5 stars

A solid blossoming of the world and characters set down in Dreadnought. Danny develops into a more fully realized character in relatively simple and straightforward ways, but the secondary cast absolutely blooms into detail and colour. The worldbuilding deepens appreciably: the Marvel and DC homages are still there, but significantly muted in favour of this world's particularities.

SPOILERS: I do feel like the book could have used a content warning regarding its forced detransition plotline—I was surprised by it and a little shaken for the rest of the day—but these things are difficult to accomplish in print media.

Deep Continuation the Builds Out a Great Character

5 stars

Pros:

More than perhaps any other author, April Daniels has somehow figured out how to write hand-to-hand combat in a way that's both understandable to me and fun to read. Usually my eyes glaze over for those scenes, but here I could follow it and was excited to see what was next.

Danny continues to be a very sympathetic character, and it was engrossing to read about her struggling with her anger and trauma.

Would love to see the conclusion of the trilogy, but, even if we never get it, we came to a satisfying stopping point.

Cons:

Kinetiq is barely a character. I know they're a nonbinary anarchist and have some kind of light powers, but beyond that we get almost nothing of their background and personality.

There were a lot of subplots going on, and they fit together satisfyingly, but there was maybe one too many for the …

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rated it

5 stars