This book is bad in my opinion. There are so many things wrong with it but I think it just comes down to Bradley not understanding US politics and not digging deep enough into her characters. Like, they just kept it shallow and didn’t think hard enough about the story.

None of the characters are likable. Except Aaron but we get one and a half scenes of him. Riley is a bad narrator, she’s consistingly jumping between infodumping instead of living and then being stupid. Plus, she has no friends but one straight girl and no connection to queer people even on the internet. She has no queer culture, and she lives in The City. Does Bradley know how fucking weird that is?! Is Riley actually a clone with bad programming? I grew up in a conservative rural town and I knew queer kids my age. Javita was butchered as a character, she deserved better. Why would she be friends with Riley when Riley is a blond white girl who doesn’t care about politics and is a bad listener? The story tries to tell us that Jav doesn’t understand working for Hench because it’s against her morals while she grew up in the same bad part of the city that Riley did and is a Black girl. Realistically, in the US where there are very few safety nets that are assessable to POC, Jav would have had an even harsher experience than Riley and would the first to tell Riley to do what she’s gotta do. Sherman isn’t a character, she’s two empty characters. She jumps from being the baddest of asses to a flake with no sense of self. Lissa is sweet and her relationship with Riley makes no sense. Captain is on the verge of being a whole character.

The pacing was bad. It kept jumping between Riley’s boring as hell life and the action scenes so the story had no flow, it was like being pushed in and out of the shower so you can’t acclimate.

The plot was set up pretty well in how it pieces together, its only flaw is that it doesn’t reflect capitalist government corruption at all. The US government doesn’t care about the impoverished. It gives them the worst situations with all the evidence and nothing changes because everyone is too busy to do anything about it. It’s not that the government needs to hide anything, it’s that the system they have going makes it impossible to do anything. A more accurate tale would be for Riley to gather enough followers to storm the city halls and court and business sector and force those in power to do something. Revealing corruption isn’t meaningful. Everyone already knows. The unionizing was bullshit. The Supers vs Normies was stupid. The only analogy that it reflected was rich vs poor and it didn’t even reflect just how helpless the populace truly are because Supers weren’t as powerful as the rich are.

The writing isn’t bad. The thing that hurts most about this story is that it could be good. Bradley isn’t a bad writer, they just haven’t written enough yet. Their politics aren’t bad, they just haven’t dug in deep enough yet. Their characters could be complex and lovable if Bradley just mixed their hands in the characters’ guts until they could taste Riley and Sherman and Lissa’s essence. I think the next books that Bradley publishes will be better than this one but I think this one is a failure of a story. It had dreams of flying but is only a chicken.