pixin@bookwyrm.social reviewed Young Sentinels by Marion G. Harmon
Great new characters, escalating power levels & fights
4 stars
This is the third book in the Wearing the Cape series, and I quite enjoyed it.
Unlike the first two books, this one have multiple narrators, changing each chapter. It does say in the header of the chapter who's narrating, but it took me a long, somewhat confusing time to notice that.
Each of the three narrators does have a fairly distinct voice, which I appreciated once I knew them well enough to recognize them. By the end of the book I honestly liked Grendel a lot better than Hope/Astra. I think perhaps Megaton was at least partially an attempt to recapture the innocence of the new-to-superpowers-and-super-heroing that Hope had in the first book, but the circumstances were too radically different.
On the surface there are three main plots: 1 - Hope becomes the leader of her own "Young Sentinels" team. According the The Rules, because these kids are all …
This is the third book in the Wearing the Cape series, and I quite enjoyed it.
Unlike the first two books, this one have multiple narrators, changing each chapter. It does say in the header of the chapter who's narrating, but it took me a long, somewhat confusing time to notice that.
Each of the three narrators does have a fairly distinct voice, which I appreciated once I knew them well enough to recognize them. By the end of the book I honestly liked Grendel a lot better than Hope/Astra. I think perhaps Megaton was at least partially an attempt to recapture the innocence of the new-to-superpowers-and-super-heroing that Hope had in the first book, but the circumstances were too radically different.
On the surface there are three main plots:
1 - Hope becomes the leader of her own "Young Sentinels" team. According the The Rules, because these kids are all under 18, they are strictly not allowed to be sent into combat.
2 - A forest is trying for a hostile takeover of all the city's airports
3 - Someone is going around killing people who attack superheroes, regardless of how dangerous the attack was.
I really, really liked most of the Young Sentinels team, and didn't dislike any of them. Grendel was a breath of fresh air, and Ozma is a delight both on her own and as a foil.
However, I had a number of issues with it, some of which are unique to this book and some of which only became issues in this book because of a cumulative effect from previous books.
On the cumulative side, in this book I really started to notice how frequently The Rules were strictly, absolutely enforced...except when it would be inconvenient or undramatic. Also, Astra apparently has a secret super power that allows her to fit an impossible and ever-increasing number of work-related activities into her day, and still spend time with her friends and family (although admittedly that's often cut short). And the anti-super demagogue is an increasingly present issue that doesn't look like he'll be going away. Plus it starts to feel like there's a checklist to mark off for each book.
But when I finished the book, my first words were, "Hope's annual crush had BETTER not come to anything because that is just super skeevy."