Today I’m reviewing two books! Dreadnought and Sovereign both by April Daniels. Here’s a quick overview of the series before I give you my thoughts on each.

About The Book: Danny Tozer has a problem: she just inherited the powers of Dreadnought, the world’s greatest superhero.

Until Dreadnought fell out of the sky and died right in front of her, Danny was trying to keep people from finding out she’s transgender. But before he expired, Dreadnought passed his mantle to her, and those secondhand superpowers transformed Danny’s body into what she’s always thought it should be. Now there’s no hiding that she’s a girl.

Dreadnought’s murderer—a cyborg named Utopia—still haunts the streets of New Port City, threatening destruction. If Danny can’t sort through the confusion of coming out, master her powers, and stop Utopia in time, humanity faces extinction.

Dreadnought

That’s it, that’s my whole blackout poetry inspired review for Dreadnought. Kidding! This book shines by interweaving own voice experiences with a world where a kid picks up the mantle of a famous superhero. It also has the worst bad guys in any story I’ve seen in a very long time. There’s nothing redeemable about them, but since their motivations are so every day I found myself rooting for their downfall even harder.

sovereign

Dreadnought is back! I normally care most about the plot in sequels since when continuing a story the story is a really important factor. But here, I cared more about how Dreadnought was doing. And that answer makes up the majority of the book. It’s also nice that book 2 showed more community issues giving us a bigger picture of both the superhero and transgender world. There were several lines in this book that were simply brilliant and I stopped to think only a thoughtful author like April Daniel could have pulled them off. Villians continue to be the ~worst~ but to my delight, we also get another trans superhero, Kinetiq, who I love dearly.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but I’m pretty happy how this book ended and I’ll be among the first to nervously and hopefully read a book 3 when we get it.

As a series, I give these two ★★★★½ ! I’d suggest this series for anywho who has ever even vaguely enjoyed superheroes, burnt out on the “trend” or not this story has something unique and powerful to offer.