Archememies by by Marissa Meyer
Jan. 24th, 2020 01:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redrikkiThis is the second book in the Renegades series and it only took me the better part of a month to finish it. Remember the days when I could read a book and a half a week? Now that I've got a tablet, I'm reading fanfic every time I sit down on the couch so I basically only read books at lunch. Ah, well.
This book picks up right where the last one left off. I think there's a two week time skip, but not much has changed from the end of the previous one. Now that Nova has cemented her place as spy by killing one of her former friends, she can really get down to business undermining the Renegades. There's quite a bit more romance of the awkward sort between our two leads, but, for me, the really interesting part was Agent N.
As hinted at in the previous novel, the ruling superheroes have developed a drug which can remove anyone's powers. Throughout the book, the various characters debate the ethics of it. The Renegade Council sees it as a non-violent way to neutralize superpowered enemies. Nova rightly points out that it's ripe for abuse and is quickly proven correct by some of her more morally questionable "colleagues." To me though, the most interesting aspect of the Agent N debate was that no one was saying the most obvious thing: taking away someone's powers won't make them less of a villain.
The story opens with a bunch of people steeling drugs from a hospital to sell on the street. One of those people has powers and she becomes the one everyone focuses on by default, but the non-powered people are just as culpable, if not quite as immediately dangerous. The premise of Agent N as far as the Renegades are concerned is that removing powers will make them stop being bad when really all it will do is make them marginally less dangerous. Eventually, Nova is able to use some Agent N against some Renegades and the way these neutralized former superheroes are regarded by their former colleagues is telling when it comes to the ways people in-universe view heroics and those without powers
The book ends with a series of bangs and now I am on to book three, Supernova.
This book picks up right where the last one left off. I think there's a two week time skip, but not much has changed from the end of the previous one. Now that Nova has cemented her place as spy by killing one of her former friends, she can really get down to business undermining the Renegades. There's quite a bit more romance of the awkward sort between our two leads, but, for me, the really interesting part was Agent N.
As hinted at in the previous novel, the ruling superheroes have developed a drug which can remove anyone's powers. Throughout the book, the various characters debate the ethics of it. The Renegade Council sees it as a non-violent way to neutralize superpowered enemies. Nova rightly points out that it's ripe for abuse and is quickly proven correct by some of her more morally questionable "colleagues." To me though, the most interesting aspect of the Agent N debate was that no one was saying the most obvious thing: taking away someone's powers won't make them less of a villain.
The story opens with a bunch of people steeling drugs from a hospital to sell on the street. One of those people has powers and she becomes the one everyone focuses on by default, but the non-powered people are just as culpable, if not quite as immediately dangerous. The premise of Agent N as far as the Renegades are concerned is that removing powers will make them stop being bad when really all it will do is make them marginally less dangerous. Eventually, Nova is able to use some Agent N against some Renegades and the way these neutralized former superheroes are regarded by their former colleagues is telling when it comes to the ways people in-universe view heroics and those without powers
The book ends with a series of bangs and now I am on to book three, Supernova.
