Synopsis:
What happens when you don’t pay your superhero bill?
Kit Baldwin is just trying to get by.
Rent is due. Food would be nice. A girlfriend, maybe. When she stumbles upon a crashed alien spaceship’s power source, she gets more than she ever bargained for.
The alien artifact draws the attention of Valene, Kit’s crush, and the most powerful woman alive. Cosmic radiation from the ship gave some superhuman powers, but the Empowered sell them for a fee. Bankrupt, the city can’t afford any disasters.
Though Valene represents the company holding Kit’s city hostage, Kit can’t help but fall in love with her. It helps Valene lobbies for change, but disaster looms: her superhuman gifts are debilitating. Her deteriorating condition forces her to leave, depriving the city its champion and Kit newfound happiness.
In love and running out of time, Kit unleashes the artifact’s full power, transforming herself forever, as well as the battle over what is owed, and to whom.
Review:
It has super heroes, extraordinary power, responsibility, corporate greed, alien technology… But above all, it’s about finding oneself in the midst of the chaos we call life. The short version: Ever the Hero is a great story.
But it isn’t your typical super hero tale. Kit doesn’t have powers. She’s just a woman trying to survive in a city that failed to pay its dues to the corporation responsible for Empowered (see super hero) protections. Unless the city pays, its residents are without emergency services (which are rendered by the Empowered.) Needless to say, things aren’t good in the city.
Things aren’t always great for the Empowered, either. Valene’s power utilized sonic waves, but it cripples her. She can hear everything, all the time. She only wants peace and quiet, for the sake of her own sanity, and Kit does all she can to help give Valene just that. But as with so many super hero stories, things don’t quite go as anyone plans.
What I liked most about Kit’s story was the element of self-discovery. She never lived for herself, but she learns to along the way. She doesn’t think herself a hero, but she is one. It’s her actions that define her, not the abilities she has, and I loved that about her. She was fearless when needed and fought for what she believed in.
And what she believed was right wasn’t always in line with the law—or her world’s politics. The government controls the Empowered response teams, and a single corporation (Great Power, or GP) is the entity that deploys them. Artifacts like the one Kit uncovers are illegal. Using powers without sanction is illegal, even if those powers are used to aid those in need. It was a tangled web of who controls what (as politics so often are), but configured really well for the story.
There’s a lot to love in this book, and it’s only the beginning of the series. I’ll be moving on to book 2 next.
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