A review by ohmage_resistance
Dreadnought by April Daniels

adventurous inspiring medium-paced
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Closeted trans girl gets to magically transition as a side effect of getting superpowers.
  • I generally liked this one. However, superheroes generally aren’t my favorite genre, and so I generally didn’t like those parts about the book too much. I didn’t hate them, just didn’t find it super interesting. I think it’s often difficult to translate the kind of slap dash worldbuilding of superhero comics into a novel, and this book did an ok but not a great job (I think a lot of the more successful cases I’ve read do this by using comedy—shout out to The Meister of Decimen City—or by making the world a dystopia). Danielle was also quite difficult to physically hurt, and I feel like that took the tension away from a lot of the fight scenes.
  • What I think this book did really well is exploring Danielle’s experiences after she came out and transitioned, both good and bad. I’ve seen some reviews commenting on Danny’s experiences with a TERF superhero and with her sexist best friend, but I think the one that really stuck out to me was her experiences with her abusive parents. It has some really powerful examples of how strong verbal abuse can be, even without physical abuse, and how toxic masculinity leads to abusive behavior. You can really tell just how much Danny’s father has influenced how she views herself, and her struggle to overcome that was the most interesting arc in the book for me. It also shows how Danny’s mother’s more passive but still transphobic behavior just adds fuel to the fire. I will say all of these elements do make this book a lot darker than a lot of YA books, but I still think these issues are really relevant to teens. There’s also a lot more slurs in this book than I was expecting, but April Daniels is very deliberate about when she uses them. There were also examples of Danny celebrating having a body she feels comfortable in and people who accept her, so it’s not all just depressing stuff.

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