Review: Powerless

Powerless is the YA Fantasy debut of Lauren Roberts, who you may know from BookTok. The story follows Paedyn Gray as she is pulled into a deadly competition called the Purging Trials. She is completely powerless against her competitors with special abilities - and she is desperately trying to hide that fact.

Spoiler-free review:

With a 4,34 average rating on GoodReads (with 60.000+ ratings), a deadly-competition-filled plot, magic abilities and enemies-to-lovers, you'd think this is a recipe for success. The premise of this book hooked me very fast, but because of its bare-minimum world-building and lack of depth in the enemies-to-lovers romance, it failed to deliver. Had only the romance been a little lackluster and the world-building great, or the other way around, I would have been able to enjoy it a lot more. My conclusion is that, for a YA Fantasy, this book is... fine.

Spoiler review:

- Enemies to Lovers

Powerless is an excellent example of why I'm starting to dislike the enemies-to-lovers trope. It was badly executed. I had to visit the author's socials to check whether or not it was supposed to be enemies-to-lovers at all, which I correctly guessed was, in fact, the case, what with the hitting and the flying daggers and all.

This enemies-to-lovers romance really did not work for me. First of all, it was odd to me that the author even went for the enemies-to-lovers trope, since one of the first interactions between the two love interests is one saving the other's life; this is event has a near-instant bonding effect. Paedyn then proceeds to act hostile toward Kai. I remember being confused about this. I expected there to be some speculation as to who made her enter the Trials, since, if you ask me, it would have been a lot more interesting if Kai made her enter. He could have done so after suspecting her of being an Ordinary during their first encounter. That would give Paedyn a real reason to consider him her enemy. But this didn't happen either. The reason she's hostile towards him is simply because he is the "future Enforcer", and his duty is to kill Ordinaries like her. I'll admit, this makes... some sense, I guess? Though I believe if she were genuinely terrified, she wouldn't have made him into an enemy (because this could awaken even more suspicion), but she would have been polite yet distant.

And it's not just this that bothers me. It's that this reason (him being the "future Enforcer") is hardly ever mentioned on touched upon. And we're talking about the reason behind her conflicted emotions every time she speaks to him, here. There's a lot of potential; Paedyn could be wondering, every time she sees Kai, how many innocent people he's killed as "future Enforcer". She could be thinking about her disdain for someone who'd want to become an enforcer at all. She could have imagined the moment of him finding out she's an Ordinary, the moment his eyes turn to disbelief, then disdain. The moment he'll turn against her. She could be thinking that it is not a matter of whether or not this will happen, but rather when. This would have given so much more strength to her choice to try to distance herself from him. But none of this is touched on. No such inner monologue ever happens; none of it is touched on for 80% of the book. Look at the following quote at 75%:

But my hesitance to join him has nothing to do with dirtying my dress and everything to do with the fact that I shouldn’t stay here. What I should do is turn, wish him goodnight, and head back to my room without another word.

I annotated it, apparently annoyed at this point, saying, "WHY". She doesn't explain why. The next sentence simply moves on:

And yet, my feet make no move to carry me away from him.

The consequences of this very annoying lack of depth and emotional insight into the relationship between these two are manifold. The banter felt random. The hatred felt forced. I couldn't get into rooting for them, because I had no idea at all what I should be rooting against. I was constantly annoyed with Paedyn for being so passive toward Kai when he was so obviously trying to be nice to her.

Additionally, I had this strong feeling like the author was trying really hard to get these one-liners in, leading to conversations where I was completely losing what the two love interests were even talking about.

When the author finally does let us into Paedyn's reason for trying to push him away, it's at 84% and only lasts 6 very short sentences:

He doesn’t even know who I truly am. What I truly am. And if he did, he would kill me. Because that is what the Enforcer would do. Because that is what the king’s son would do. Because that is what he has been created to do.

If only we had been reminded of this the whole way through. If only there were more scenes of Kai nearly finding out about her true identity. It would have added the so much tension and much-needed depth to their relationship. It actually hurts to think about this missed opportunity.

- Lack of world-building

This book contains, well, some world-building. But it was not enough to make this world convincing. There was a map, which was nice. I could not for the life of me recall anything particular about culture except for the national colors (green. Just green). With effort, my imagination would've been able to fill in those blanks, but the problem is that the novel gives very little thought to the way its world works when it matters. The author's lack of consideration is clear in scenes where the main character struts around at a ball with a dagger visible for everyone to see, even though she has plenty of motive to want to kill the king, and the king is aware of the growing resistance to his rule in his country. It's incredibly unrealistic that walking around with a weapon like that, in such times, is even allowed.

More evidence for lack of consideration: what even is the reason for the Trials? Going by full name only, "The Purging Trials", I would think they are meant to demonstrate the weeding out from Ordinaries pretending to be Elites in a public manner. Since I couldn't remember whether or not this was the case, I decided to go back and look at quotes. This is how the Purging Trials are explained:

Although the Purging Trials are nothing to laugh about, I can’t help but find it comical that they are meant to be a celebration. In honor of the Great Purging over three decades ago, the Trials were created to showcase the peoples’ supernatural abilities and bring honor to the only Elite kingdom.

I wouldn’t say murdering innocent people brings honor to me, my kingdom, or my family - not that I have any left to bring honor to. And yet, every five years, young Elites are chosen to compete in these games for both the glory and enough shillings to build your own comfy castle while you try to escape the trauma the Trials caused you.

Sounds familiar, right? It's like the author took a lot of inspiration from The Hunger Games, yet failed to come up with a compelling reason to hold a similar competition at all - which Suzanne Collins did brilliantly, offering relevant social critique in the process. But I digress. The only reason to hold these Trials, according to the author, is to celebrate the fact that there was once a plague that killed an incredible amount of people, and left the rest with a range of abilities. How a king can justify, to his kingdom, the killing of even more people in order to celebrate the past dying of people, is very puzzling to me. At least if the Trials were about purging the Ordinaries from the population to keep it "pure", it would make a bit more sense; this would be an actual reasoning that, despite being cruel, has another purpose besides just being cruel. Additionally, this reasoning could have excellently raised the stakes: the fact that Paedyn would be entering a competition designed to weed out Ordinaries would be a great way to add more pressure and anxiety to her storyline. It would also give more of a direction as to what the Trials should look like, which felt quite arbitrary in the book.

- Similarity to other works

If you've been following my reviews for a while, you know that escapism is the very reason I read fantasy, and therefore it is an important aspect to me while reading the genre. Now, I get that true originality is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, but the plot of this book just felt so incredibly similar to both The Hunger Games and Red Queen - and then, all the way near the end, to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The maze trial felt truly uninspired, especially since the maze hedges do exactly the same thing in Harry Potter by moving, shifting and twisting. I refuse to believe I was the only one who nearly burst out laughing when the author introduced the Elites with the ability to not only capture video with their eyes alone, but also broadcast them on a large screen. This was the moment that it was made blatantly clear how much the author was borrowing from The Hunger Games; her fantasy setting kept her from being able to use video, so apparently she just came up with a solution like this. Really, the similarities between this novel and others was so on the nose that I couldn't help but be reminded of The Hunger Games and Red Queen every few pages, making it lose points where escapism is concerned. The author could've ameliorated this by making the world-building more immersive, but that was lacking as well.

- The writing

Listen, I really don't like to trash an indie author's debut, but she has a long way to go where her writing is concerned. Most of the prose was fine, nothing special, but occasionally it bugged me how childish the dialogue was - even for YA. To boot, there were definitely more typos and grammar errors than I am used to reading.

- Some other thoughts I had:

Kai's sudden hatred for Paedyn after she killed his father, the king, didn't feel authentic to me. The king abused Kai; I'm not saying Paedyn did him a favor by killing his father... although maybe, yes. Moreover, if you consider how head over heels he was for her, his reaction doesn't make a lot of sense. If you're that in love, you're not seeing straight. He should have at least tried to understand, asked her why she did what she did. Perhaps if he had reason to truly love his father, his actions would have made sense. But in literally all the interactions between them, he was nothing but cruel to him.

To put the icing on the cake, Paedyn doesn't use this moment - when Kai is getting angry with her for killing a horrible man, who abused his son and killed his own people - to point out that Kai himself once killed her father. This truly was one of the most annoying moments in the book. Surely, the author is saving that moment (when Kai realizes he killed Paedyn's father) for the next installment, but I also think she could have come up with a reason, at least, for why Paedyn isn't throwing that into Kai's face in this scene.

Considering all this, I have to say the king was a lazily written villain; there was no nuance to him at all. He was just a cruel man who wanted to kill everyone in his kingdom who wasn't special.

In the next installment, certainly, Kitt will be the villain, which is also not believable to me given how reasonable he was for the entire novel. Of course, grief changes you, but it doesn't erase or change someone's entire personality. Nuance and complexity, I think the author could definitely do with some nuance and complexity in her characters. It's not just love or hatred someone would feel in these situations. It's both of them together, while simultaneously dealing with grief, disappointment, confusion, etc.

Also, Paedyn is described as having dark lashes, even though she has silver hair.

+ Positive points:

The competition plot works helps, I guess. It keeps the stakes high, and made it somewhat enjoyable. The cover is really beautiful. Those who like vibes and romance, I guess this is for you. I'm so sorry; I'm really trying to remember things I liked, but I just really can't.

Conclusion:

For someone who values escapism and depth, this novel was a big disappointment. The writing was okay aside from the grammatical errors and typos, though this is one of the things I could've gotten over if all the other aspects were well-done. But yeah, in spite of this being a YA Fantasy (my favorite genre) this just really wasn't for me. It offered nothing new, and failed to improve or renew the aspects that it was rehashing. I will give the author credit, since she started writing this when she was eighteen and self-published it one/two years later. Now it's getting published by Simon & Schuster, which is quite an accomplishment. Also, this is her debut, so I'm trying to be mild in my rating, and hope she improves in the future (or an editor does another round of edits).

Escapism: 3/5

Depth: 2/5

Final Ranking: 3/5 (2,5 rounded up)