Supernova

This book has the usual annoyances I've come to expect from Marissa Meyer: extreme repetition of information, excess length, a smattering of typos and research fails, and the dreaded “had had” phrase... all somehow twisted into a compelling and engaging narrative which manages to hold my interest despite its failings. It's this odd ability to remain engaging that has led me to give Supernova two stars instead of one.

Yeah, I'm that disappointed.

For the first half of this book, I enjoyed the story despite its flaws. It felt like a guilty pleasure. Then things went downhill fast. By three quarters into the book, the absolutely absurd plot course and lack of nuance in once-depthful characters made me hate characters I once loved and resent not just the book but its author for ruining something that was originally pretty damn entertaining.

I was invested in Adrian and Nova's relationship. I was intrigued by Nova's moral quandary. I adored Honey's classiness. I thought Hugh was a well-meaning if also misguided man whose heart was in the right place. I loved how the heroes and villains fell into shades of grey morality.

Then this book kept going and I found myself hating the characters I once loved as they became horrible caricatures. I watched in horror as the narrative bent over backward to excuse disgusting abuses of power by the so-called heroes. My heart plummeted and my gut twisted in disgust as I saw once-sympathetic characters become irredeemable villains. I tried not to let it bother me too much because I still enjoyed how action-packed the book was from beginning to end and still found it entertaining.

But then Nova did some completely unforgivable things which destroyed the ship for me entirely. And the book dared to not only have Adrian forgive her, but to keep the relationship going. There was gaslighting to an extreme far from the acceptable limits of enemies-to-lovers (especially in YA!), abuse through negligence, emotional abuse, looking the other way while horrible things happened... Overall, it read as if Nova were an abuser and Adrian her lovestruck victim and it made me sick. I did not get invested in these characters just to watch...

Nova stand idly by while one of her villain allies tortured and carved the tattoos off of her boyfriend. Multiple times. While he still maintained hope that maybe she'd have a change of heart and help him. And she never had to even answer for her inaction, much less face any kind of resentment from him!

Ugh. Anyway. It isn't even just that which ticked me off.

No, see, everyone feels out of character. People's motives jump around as the plot requires. The only intelligent characters are written as if they're jerks for their beliefs - such as challenging the self-imposed rights the Renegade Council has claimed to nullify the powers of criminals who are being kept in a brutal prison without being given trials or second chances. The Renegades get away with nonconsensually altering the DNA of people they deem too dangerous, allowing police brutality, deciding to execute a teenager, and a few other disgustingly egregious crimes.

It's annoying, because the heroes come across as far worse than the villains, and I think the author noticed because all the nuances of most of the villains are destroyed to turn them into even worse characters. Pure evil. The grey morality I enjoyed in the first two books was thrown away, and I didn't appreciate that.

I also grew sick of the myriad of potholes. I can't even catalogue all of them, because I noticed likely one - often closer to four - inconsistencies or outright plot holes per chapter. I grew annoyed by the pointless and nonsensical narrative choices in the plots. I found myself being baffled that this was part of the same series.

So I decided not to treat it as such. Reading it as a long fanfic that had potential but didn't quite grasp the world or characters made it easier to keep going. Easier to ignore the ridiculous origin story given for why people are prodigies in this world. Easier to tell myself that Nova, Hugh, Adrian, Danna, Ruby, Honey, etc. would never do these things.

But in this book, they do. They aren't the characters I adored. Everyone is both too stupid and, in many cases, too evil to live. With the associated cringey dialogue amped to eleven.

I read the whole thing, though. Sunk cost fallacy and morbid curiosity. Only to land on an absurd ending (riddled with more holes in the plot than a block of Swiss cheese) which plasters some rainbows and sunshine over a mountain of crap. Repercussions? Consequences? Meaningful changes in the world? Nah!

Also, the author handed the epilogue to the most loathsome character in the entire series and made a lame reveal which meant nothing, shoehorned a relationship which didn't make sense, and rushed Nova and Adrian with no resolution for all their issues. I guess it's easy to redeem a character for being her partner's abuser when you decide to just not have her partner - or anyone else - address it...?