Powerless - Review

Powerless (The Powerless Trilogy, # 1)

By: Lauren Roberts

Publication: November 7, 2023 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

523 pages

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Source: Borrowed from the e-library

( Goodreads | Amazon )

*Note: The above link to Amazon is an affiliate links. Affiliate links support giveaways for Somewhere Only We Know readers.

Goodreads description--She is the very thing he’s spent his whole life hunting.
He is the very thing she’s spent her whole live pretending to be.

Only the extraordinary belong in the kingdom of Ilya—the exceptional, the empowered, the Elites. The powers these Elites have possessed for decades were graciously gifted to them by the Plague, though not all were fortunate enough to both survive the sickness and reap the reward. Those born Ordinary are just that—ordinary. And when the king decreed that all Ordinaries be banished to preserve his Elite society, lacking an ability suddenly became a crime—making Paedyn Gray a felon by fate and a thief by necessity.

Surviving in the slums as an Ordinary is no simple task, and Paedyn knows this better than most. Having been trained by her father to be keenly observant since she was a child, Paedyn poses as a Psychic in the crowded city, blending in with the Elites as best she can to stay alive and out of trouble…easier said than done.

When Paeydn unsuspectingly saves one of Ilya’s princes, she finds herself thrown into the Purging Trials. The brutal competition exists to showcase the Elites’ powers—the very thing Paedyn lacks. If the Trials and the opponents within them don’t kill her, the prince she’s fighting feelings for certainly will if he discovers what she is…completely Ordinary.

I've heard conflicting reviews on Instagram about Powerless. Some loved it. Others didn't understand the hype. My niece, who is only recently becoming a reader, recommended this book to me at about the same time as my hold with the library became available. 

Paedyn is an Ordinary living in the slums. She's been pretending to be a Psychic since she was little. She's been trained by her father to notice all the tiny details about people that can give her a means of convincing them that she knows things she can't possibly know until he died 5 years ago. Ordinaries are considered to be diseased or cause disease among the Elites. So they've been outlawed. All known Ordinaries have been banished or killed. So Paedyn's secret is a matter of life and death. Living in the slums, thievery is her main source of income. Using the skills her father taught her, it's easy for her to choose a mark and then use her pretend gift to distract them. Only Paedyn accidentally steals from a prince. This prince is on track to be the next king's Enforcer. 

Prince Kai (short for Malakai) has the skill of taking on anyone else's skill around himself. He finds it odd that he can't feel Paedyn's skill. Prince Kai isn't the heir. That's his brother, Prince Kitt. Kai and Kitt have been raised differently. Kai's mother died, and their father is now married to Kitt's mother. Kai has basically been abused in the name of training. His father has forced him to injure himself and then turn around and heal himself using the abilities of a healer. He's been forced to be exposed to his greatest fear, heights, over and over until he, at the very least, showed no outward signs of fear. He's been made to kill others in the name of the king. And essentially, that's what his job will be when Kitt becomes king. But Paedyn intrigues him from their first meeting. He's drawn to her. The problem is that they are both thrown into a set of trials, and there can only be one winner. 

The trials were a little confusing. On the one hand, there can only be one winner. On the other hand, I couldn't figure out if all of the other candidates are supposed to die during the trials or just some do and some don't. It wasn't fleshed out. It did seem that Paedyn took her involvement in the trials to be a death sentence. The first trial was a little brutal compared to the other two. And I don't think I could have come up with a series of games that was better or more entertaining, yet I felt like this area might have been underutilized in the writing process.

Some things that didn't make sense: Kai is said to be the future Enforcer when his brother becomes king. Yet no mention is made of a current Enforcer. The way Kitt and Kai handled both being attracted to the same girl was so odd to me. The brothers seem extremely close. They both discuss Paedyn. Yet there's no discussion between them about staking a claim or feeling jealousy. Kai, obviously, feels jealous of Kitt's partnering Paedyn for all of the balls. And Kai seems to address it with Paedyn herself, but not with Kitt, which I found odd. Paedyn has a role to play in getting Kitt to open up a door for her, but I would have thought she would have been more cautious. Paedyn's joining of the rebellion happened so fast. And I just felt like the character all of a sudden became thoughtless in areas that didn't make sense, except to fill in a plot hole or to force the plot to go where it "needed" to go.

Things end with my least favorite type of cliffhanger. I like cliffhangers that have potential. When it feels like everything has gone to pot and all of the characters I like are either in danger or in terrible places, sometimes I don't even want to carry on with the series, or I feel no issue putting the series down and not coming back to it for a while. Unfortunately, I think that's what I might do with The Powerless Trilogy. This type of cliffhanger isn't making me want to come back to this series and finish it. Especially when mixed with the reviews I've heard about the series. (Hopeful cliffhangers do not have this effect on me.)

I read Powerless really quickly which is always a plus for me. I was rooting for Paedyn and Kai. Yet now that I've finished it, I find that it doesn't hold up to close analysis. And guys, I'm barely touching the surface with this review because it's been two weeks between finishing it and writing my review. Once I've looked at everything, I have to give Powerless 3.5 Stars due to things that didn't make sense to me and the cliffhanger ending. Have you read Powerless? What did you think? Let me know!