Powerless is the story of Paedyn Gray, an ordinary among elites. In the kingdom of Ilya, after a devastating plague swept through the nation, those who survived evolved to become Elites, people with powers. Meanwhile, Ordinaries remained, well, ordinary. Elites and Ordinaries lived alongside each other until the current king, fearing the disease that Ordinaries carry that diminish Elite powers, decreed that all Ordinaries be cleansed. Paedyn is an Ordinary, though she parades as a psychic, and a chance encounter with the king's younger son, Prince Kai, forces her to take part in her kingdom's trials. The rewards are great, but so is the risk, and Paedyn's true identity could be revealed at any moment. Strap in, this is a long one.

This book was so ridiculously unserious. Paedyn is the most bullshit, not-like-other-girls, ridiculously talented main character I've ever had the displeasure of encountering. She's got silver hair and deep, blue eyes, which the love interest, Kai, never lets you forget (I'm honestly surprised "orbs" wasn't dropped). She's smart enough to pretend she's psychic through observation, but not smart enough to hold her damn tongue around people who could have her executed without a second thought. She's lived in the slums half her life, starving and disenfranchised, but she's also such a strong fighter she can best the guy who's supposed to be the kingdom's Top Cop. She is perfect in every way and only has flaws when it's convenient for nudging the plot or romance along. The second main character and love interest, Kai, isn't much better. He's just a cardboard cutout of a YA/romantasy love interest: brooding, unreasonably large, ruthless killer. Oh, right, he's also basically the one going around committing genocide against all those Ordinaries! The narrative doesn't even try to gloss over it, they cannot stop mentioning what a cruel, merciless murderer he is. There's one scene early on where he's supposed to kill an Ordinary child but he lets her go, and I thought 'oh, it turns out he's actually been smuggling them out or something. Cliche but ok' but nooooo, it's just that he doesn't kill kids. But he does kill dozens, maybe even hundreds, of regular people! Wow, are you swooning yet?

The plot is...bad. This book is 500+ pages long and I was slogging through it. I kept turning up my audiobook speed so I could get through it faster. There's these trials that I really couldn't give less of a shit about, all clearly designed to further the romance instead of actually challenge the characters. It kind of takes away from the tension of it all in that, yes, they are deadly trials, but if no one did anything stupid they all easily could come out of it alive. It's not last person standing or anything. The main antagonist, the evil king who's committing ethnic cleansing, is so comically evil. There's not even anything about protecting his country or trying to do what's best for his people or being susceptible to racist-adjacent thinking. He's just a straight-up evil guy who killed half his population because idk he wanted to? Oh, and speaking of racism, there is one (1) character of color in the whole series: Paedyn's best friend, Adena. She serves no purpose but to squeal over things in a way that Paedyn never could because, remember, she is not like the other girls. Quick spoiler here, but as the only character of color, Adena is brutally murdered in the final trial because the king wants to hurt Paedyn (re: comically evil). I cannot believe we are still killing off POC for a white character's development in the year of our lord 2023 (when this book came out).

But let's not pretend the plot is what's important here! No, no, everything is this book is transparently for the purpose of the romance, to put Kai and Paedyn in the same room. Which would be fine if it weren't the most boring, overdone, milktoast romance ever written. Every single one of their actions follows a set script: Kai flirts, Paedyn threatens to pull a dagger on him, occasionally actually does, there's tension, they're interrupted before anything can go further. And it's just that again and again and again for 500 PAGES. There is also a "love triangle" going on with the older prince, Kit, also being involved, but literally who gives a shit about him. No one. He's not even a POV character, you're not fooling anybody. The whole romance is very insta-love from Kai's point of view, and they really don't have any reason to be so goddamned obsessed with each other.

The writing is bad. It's not as bad as some other books I've read, but it's up there. This book suffers from i-don't-know-what-time-period-i'm-writing-in-itis, which is one of my pet peeves. We are ostensibly in a high fantasy world with castles and no electricity and whatnot, and yet. Characters are constantly wearing skin-tight clothing (Paedyn in particular wears dresses that would only be suitable for a red carpet event in the 80s or later), they generally speak in a very modern style, they hold fucking publicity events for these stupid fucking trials, and they keep referencing "hell" even though there seems to be no organized religion, let alone a trace of Christianity.

The thing that really irks me though, is that all this is not enough to damn this book. I certainly didn't like it, but if you're pandering to a 2020s, booktok-esque audience, this is exactly the kind of book you want to write. So maybe I would have given it 2 stars or something. If it weren't for the BLATANT PLAGIARISM. You would be hard pressed to find a scene in this book that is not ripped straight from The Hunger Games, Red Queen, The Selection, or Harry Potter. Let's see...the entire concept of the book is incredibly similar to Red Queen's plot, with its Reds and Silvers and royal brothers involved in a love triangle, and there's plenty of stuff online about specific lines or scenes if you want to hear more. There's a ball that happens, and all the women typically wear green, but Paedyn wears silver to stand out, which is straight from The Selection when America wears a different color from everyone else. The third trial is a maze that shifts and closes in on people; the descriptions sound like an audio description of the maze in The Goblet of Fire. Finally, before the trials start, contestants are brought to the castle to train, experience luxury, and have interviews, show off their talents, and garner public support. The interviews are done by someone with bright blue hair, which is not even trying to be subtle, on top of the fact that this is a stupid fucking idea when you're in fantasyland. The first trial is surviving in the woods for a week where Paedyn makes a bow and arrows from scratch; one of the love interests is injured and nursed back to health by the other, and the recording of this is eaten up by the audience. There is no word for this other than plagiarism. And the most infuriating part of it all is that it doesn't even do it well.

This was an astonishingly bad book. I cannot emphasize enough how awful it was, and it was a supreme waste of my time.