Book Review: Powerless

Title: Powerless
Author: Lauren Roberts
Genre: Romance, Fantasy, Young Adult

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What It’s About:

Paedyn scurries away from the guards through the chimney and makes her way to meet up with her friend, Adena, in the Loot. They have built a barricade that they call their home, and Adena enjoys the Honey sticky buns as well as the silk that Paedyn had stolen from another shop. Adena praises the Plague, and Paedyn chastises her as she doesn’t like it. The Plague had come thirty years prior and killed a lot of people turning people into those with magic, known as the Elites, and those without, known as the Ordinary. Paedyn is one of the Ordinaries who should have been expelled but who has hidden in the city by lying and pretending that she is Psychic.

Kai fights with his half-brother, Kitt, with their magic, and when they are done with that, he takes up Kitt with a battle by sword and weapons, which Kitt doesn’t like. When they are done, they face a girl who says that she will be at the Purging Trials, and she uses telekinesis on them, but Kai turns that magic back on her. Then they go to the kitchen and grab some snacks before Kai gets called to see the King.

Paedyn spends time out on the streets, stealing from others. She gets in the line of sight of an Elite Guard when another one starts flogging a child for stealing something. She knows that there is nothing that she can do but the other Elite Guard starts questioning her and she uses her powers of observation to convince him that she has Psychic powers. He lets her go, and she runs away to have lunch with Adena. Later, she is out on the streets when she notices a man—richly dressed and out of place walking with a swagger. She intercepts him and realizes that he has 20 coins in his pouch, and though she realizes that he is likely to notice them missing, she isn’t planning on leaving without half of them. She distracts him, thanks him for saving her, and then leaves the alley while thinking about the fact that the Elite who has offensive powers also has a lot of scars, which she thinks is a symbol of his weakness. She also did find him charming and handsome.

Kai had gone to meet with his father, who told him that his job as the Enforcer will be to figure out what is going on with a family that apparently has been hiding an Ordinary child, and that he will need to go at Dawn. Kai goes out with two guards to the location, and questions the family, who tells him that there are only four of them together; however, he notices that there are five food bowls, and then he discovers the trapdoor. The mom cries begging him to spare the girl as they had always wanted a daughter but cannot have one, but he ties her up and they round up the family with the Imperial guards. They split up, and he eventually frees the girl before walking with her to the exit to the Scorches, where he grabs her, uses the ability of the Flash and catches up with the family, freeing them to be exiled together. Then he walks back, managing his injuries from the fight that the father put up to save the girl, and saves the girl with silver hair from tripping. They talk for a bit, before she heads away, when suddenly he is attacked by a group of Elites, including a Silencer—a type of magic that cuts off other people’s magic. He feels himself dying, though he has by this point realized that the girl had stolen from him.

Paedyn comes around another street and at first ignores the crowd, before realizing that it sounds like the crowd is making noise at something bad that is happening. When she comes to the front of it, she realizes that it’s the man from whom she had stolen that is fighting against several other men. But then he goes down and she learns that there is a Silencer there, so he cannot use his magic. Seeing that no one else is willing to stand up to them, Paedyn fights the Silencer off, and saves the man’s life. She learns a bit shortly thereafter that it’s Kai, the son of the King and the future Enforcer, whose life she had saved. They do talk, and she only gives him her first name. When she returns to Adena, Adena wants to know all of the details so she shares with her as much as she can.

Eventually, the names for the Sixth Purging trials come out and Paedyn is chosen for her ward. While she is staring at the names in shock, an Imperial Guard comes to speak with her and tells her that he is there to pick her up and escort her to the palace as contestants get two weeks to get accustomed to the Palace and being contestants. She makes her way to Adena, tells her about it, and then the two girls say their goodbyes. Paedyn gets into the carriage with two others, including a boy named Ace who comes of brutish towards her because he wants to win as an Illusionist so that he can be well off.

Kai, in the meantime, had been working on the Silencer, torturing him to find out information, but the Silencer refuses to give him anything. Instead, he reports the lack of information to his father, and his brother, Kitt. The father believes that the Silencer is working with the Resistance. Later on, Kitt and Kai spar but are interrupted by Jax, who is their adopted brother after he had lost his family in a shipwreck. Blair and Sadie, who had been sparring nearby, come up to the boys and reveal that both Kai and Jax will be in the Sixth Purging Trials, along with Paedyn.

Paedyn settles in her room, surprised at the elegance of the place, and after spending two days locked in her room, her imperial guard, Lenny, tells her that she will be going to dinner with the king and queen as well as the remaining contestants. She doesn’t know what to wear so she goes to ask Lenny, only to come face to face with who turns out to be Kitt. Kitt tells her that he is intrigued by the woman who saved his brother’s life, and then adds that a maid will be there to help her get dressed. Sure enough, the maid does come, helps her get dressed, and then Lenny escorts Paedyn to the dinner, where she sits next to Ace and Hera, the other girl who had come with her from the slums. They all introduce each other to her, but she kind of doesn’t noticed Kai. Kai isn’t having any of it, so he tells her that she knows who she is and she finally realizes that he’s at the table. Dinner goes well, but Paedyn, Ace and Hera are in shock at how much food there is on the table, not having seen this much. Kai, who has been watching her and realizes that Paedyn probably is holding back, decides to pile food on her plate himself to make sure that she eats so that she has her strength.

Days pass by as Paedyn and Kai continue to spar and train ahead of their first Trial. The only thing that Paedyn knows is that they will be different, because the future Enforcer is part-taking in the trials so they want to challenge Kai. They have an interview in the Bowl before their First Trial, and Kitt walks with the contestants. He ends up talking to Paedyn during their walk, telling her that she will be fine and people will like her as long as she is herself. She is the last one to be interviewed, after Kai. Paedyn is honest during the interview, making some fun of Kai, at which the crowd roars in laughter, and then also shows her psychic powers, which is really her ability to observe people and figure out them out. At some point, Paedyn and Kai spar with each other, because she was taking out her frustration on a bunch of bags, but she had become sloppy with her form, so he corrected her. During the sparring, Kai is lenient on her, pulling his punches, but she actually beats him and afterwards tells him that he shouldn’t pull his punches as she wants a real fight.

Kitt eventually invites Paedyn to the Ball as his date, and she agrees to go with him in order to play the part—she needs people to like her so that she gets to survive the Purging Trials. She learns that she needs a seamstress, and that while most women wear green or some shade of green, it’s not a requirement to do that for the ball. So, she goes to pick up Adena from the slums to be her seamstress. Then at night, Kai begins to teach her how to dance to the waltzes so that she doesn’t trip over her own feet or stomp on his brothers.

The day of the ball arrives, and Kitt and Kai await their dates. Kai gets up when Blair comes down, telling Kitt to hold onto his drinks as he will need it by the end of the night. Kai takes Blair to the contestant’s table, and barely listens to her as she talks. Kitt comes with Paedyn, who wears a silver dress, and joins them at the contestant’s table, but Kai can’t take his eyes off of her. At some point, Blair makes a mean comment, and Paedyn returns it in kind, so Kai breaks them up. Then they all begin to dance when it’s time, and Kai goes from woman to woman, before finally grabbing Paedyn from another man, telling her that it looked like she needed saving. Paedyn agrees.

Suddenly explosives go off, and Kai throws himself on top of her. When they get up, she starts to argue with him about helping, but he hauls her out and brings her back to Kitt, who also argues with him that he would like to help. Instead, they both go to the safe vault, where the rest of the guests as well as the King and Queen are protected. Kitt keeps making rounds around the vault, and talking with his parents, before Paedyn asks him what is going on, and he tells her about the Resistance—a group of Ordinaries who are fighting back. Paedyn makes the decision to seek them out after the first Trial. When everything settles down, she finds Kai bleeding, and helps him pull out the knife in his back, as he quickly heals his wound, using the magic of a healer nearby him.

Kai wakes up in the Whispering woods, and realizes that the Trials have begun. He finds a vantage point and looks for water. Then he makes his way towards it, picking up weapons, canteens, and even finding a rabbit to kill. At the source of the water, he sets up a fire and cooks the rabbit to eat, before he is attacked by another contestant, Braxton. Their goal is to get the scraps of leather tied around their wrists from each other—either by surprise or by death—and the one with the most of these wristbands will be the winner of the first Trial. The two of them fight it out, and it looks like Braxton is about to win, but Kai throws him straight into the fire, and gets the wrist wrap from Braxton.

Paedyn had woken up as well in the Whispers, and found a vantage point to make her way to the water. As she walks, she finds a puddle of water, but then she finds that it’s all an illusion—quickly gathering the fact that Ace is the one who is behind it. They do duke it out, but Ace doesn’t get the wristband, though he does hurt her with a spear in the stomach. She gets away, and makes her way towards the water, where she finds Kai. Unable to keep her bow up and trained on him for a fight, she collapses, and Kai catches her. He finds her deep cut, and panics because he doesn’t know what to do to save her life, though he realizes that she had wanted to come to the water to drink and also clean up her cut. He stumbles across medicine that he assumes fell out from Braxton’s pockets during their fight, and rushes it to her to clean out her gash, then stitches Paedyn up while pissing her off so that she doesn’t feel the pain. When she finally gets stronger, she also makes a paste for him to help his burns heal, and they share some of their own stories.

The two of them spend the next few days—the remainder of the week in The Whispers—splitting up to try to find other members of the contestants and to get the wristlets. Each night, they do not find anyone, and one night they end up dancing together, before they are attacked by Sadie. Paedyn and Kai fight her off, though Sadie does overpower Paedyn, and Kai ends up saving her by killing Sadie just as she was about to kill Paedyn. He then calms Paedyn down, and once he makes sure that she is fine, he takes Sadie’s body to the woods and buries her deep in the wood, something that Paedyn appreciates. Then, they get the information that they have to head out to the edge of the forest in order to be picked up, so the two of them start walking together—both of them having two wristlets each now. They come across Jax and Andy, both who share their own experiences in the Trial, including Jax freaking out while they were in a pit of snakes. As they all suspected, the contestants get funneled to one location in order to fight each other. Paedyn and Andy take on Braxton and Blair, while Kai takes on Ace, furious at what Ace had done to Paedyn. Unfortunately, Ace’s illusions get the best of Kai and he ends up throwing a throwing star straight into Jax, his younger adopted brother. He incapacitates Ace, and then grabs dying Jax to run around the perimeter until he feels the Healer’s magic and uses it to start stitching Jax’s body up, saving him in the end.

The contestants end up having to sit through another interview in the Bowl, where they along with the remainder of the crowd watches what happened inside the Whispers. There were many Elites with the power to record, known as the Sights, around the area, making sure to capture whatever footage that they could have all of the fights. The contestants answer some questions, and Taleah, the commentator, reminds the spectators to put in their votes for the contestants. During the week off that they have between the Trials, Kai continues training viciously, while also working on trying to break the Silencer, before ultimately killing him. Paedyn, on the other hand, goes to her old home where she finds out that her Imperial Guard, Lenny, is part of the Resistance along with several other individuals who had deigned to meet with in a hidden trapdoor of her old home. She speaks to Calum, the leader of the Resistance, who is able to read minds, and he tells her that her father was involved in the Resistance, but he didn’t want her involved until she was much older and then they found him dead, with her gone. They tell her that they want to make a statement at the last Trial, and Lenny reveals that he has seen that there is an entrance between the Castle and the storage room underneath the King’s box in the Bowl, but he hasn’t been able to find where the entrance begins inside the castle. The Resistance tasks her with figuring it out by getting close to the future King, Kitt. She agrees to do it.

Before the Second Trials, there is another ball, which Paedyn attends wearing a red dress made by her friend, Adena. She spends time with Kitt, but then as she leaves the dance floor, she runs into Kai, knocking his wine into his shirt. So she drags him over to the willow and dabs at it, while they both flirt with one another. At some point, Kai drags her out into the dance floor, and after a couple of dances, she starts to panic. Kai is with her when she starts having this panic attack, and she tells him that she can’t breathe, so he takes her to the willow tree, and then unlaces her back, to her surprise, allowing her to breathe. Paedyn tells him that she has claustrophobia, but decides to call it a night, so he walks her to her room. Later, Kai and Kitt are sitting by the willow tree looking at Jax while drinking every time Jax stumbles. They do touch upon the topic of Paedyn, but Kai deflects and doesn’t share anything about his thoughts on her with Kitt. Then they notice that there is something going on in the bowl—Taleah had set up, and she reveals that they will be having a Brawl since the contestants weren’t visible for the spectators during their time in the Whispers. Kai goes to line up with the rest of the contestants, but he doesn’t see the girls, and Kitt tells him good bye before heading out elsewhere.

Paedyn changes into an outfit containing pants and a shirt before someone knocks on the door to her. She is not allowed to take her weapon, so she heads out to the Bowl to do the brawl, and her name gets called at random with Blair, which Paedyn doesn’t think is actually all that random, since the king had made a comment to her a few days prior that she will not be winning the Trial. She had known that Blair hides behind her telekinesis powers, but this fight proves it—she’s able to outsmart Blair’s powers, and knocks her down, giving her a punch to the face. She realizes as Blair scurries away in fury that she may have lost the fight but Blair lost her pride.

Kai wakes up surrounded by Blair, Andy and Braxton on the side of the mountain, which he also recognizes from his years of training here with his father. The group learns that they have to work together to get to the top of the mountain, and Andy tries to keep the humor going by talking, until Blair snaps at her. As they continue going up, Andy stops and points out all of the snakes, so Kai and Blair use the telekinesis power to throw the snakes over the side of the mountain, and then Kai uses Braxton’s power to help him carry Andy up the mountain. On the other side of the mountain, Paedyn had woken up with Ace and Jax, and as they climb up, Ace tries to use his illusion powers to scare the two of them, but Jax saves Paedyn from her death. Jax also tells Paedyn stories about Kai and Kitt, including the one time that Kai had returned from his mission and started hacking at his bedposts, at which point things had changed for him. She thinks about how cruel the King has been towards Kai—torturing him to learn how to manage his powers and become the Enforcer for his brother. The two groups make it to the top and learn that they have to fight each other to get to the flag, which Kai finds par for course for his father to do—build them to trust each other then break them apart. Paedyn fights with Ace, while Kai makes his way fighting through with the others. She manages to get Ace down, but then realizes that it’s not her kill to make, seeing Kai out of the corner of her eye. She leaves it to him, and Kai tells her to go get the flag, which she does. Unbeknownst to her, Kai had also shoved Braxton with telekinesis in front of a blunt twig heading for Paedyn, courtesy of Blair, thereby killing Braxton.

Another week goes by before the Third Purging Trials. Kitt finally breaks after Kai tells him that he needs to start thinking for himself, and asks Paedyn to take him out into the city. He shows her the entrance to the tunnels leading out to the Bowl located in a cell in the dungeon. Not only it is hidden, but it needs a key, which only he has on himself, so Paedyn knows that it’s going to be a challenge to get it off of him. They head out into the Loot, where she shows him around, including the posts where young children are whipped if they are caught stealing. They return the way that they came and later that night, Paedyn meets up with the Resistance, where she reveals the information to Lenny, Calum, Finn and another person that is there. She comes up with a plan, telling them that she will steal the key off of Kitt on the day of the ball, right before the Third Trial, and then she will hand it off to Lenny at the ball. They like this plan and go ahead with it. Before the ball and the event, however, she hears some screaming coming from Kai’s room, so she heads over to his room, and calms him, though at first he nicks her with his dagger. He had been dreaming that she was killed and so he didn’t realize the reality in front of him. After he calms down, he asks her to stay the night, and stay she does. The next morning, he brings her food, and then she heads back to her room.

The day of the ball comes and Paedyn shows up in a black dress, created by Adena, that makes her sparkle at night. The ball is great, and she steals the key from Kitt as planned, before handing it off to Lenny as planned. At some point, she has a conversation with Kai, and things grow taught between them. Needing to breathe, she tries to leave but a guard blocks her until Kai tells them to let her through out the window and threatens the guard with a loss of life if he doesn’t follow orders. The two of them are soaking in the rain, having a conversation where Kai puts his feelings for her on the line, but before he can kiss her, a guard comes up and tells him that his father wants him as it is urgent. Kai goes to his father, who yells at him about leaving the party, and telling him that his role is to be inside the ballroom in front of all of his people, rather than seen with a Slummer out there or going chasing after her. Kai knows that he won’t stop chasing after Paedyn regardless of his father’s orders.

The third trial arrives, and the contestants are freed into the arena in the Bowl, which has been transformed into a maze now. Paedyn goes from one side, while Kai goes from another, and both of them keep running around into dead ends. At some point, Paedyn barely avoids the bushes attacking her, though they trap her foot in them, and she has to pull it out, basically shredding her skin, and losing her boot. So she limps around the maze, making her way to the center. She encounters Blair, but once again uses her magic against her by telling Blair that she will not have either Kitt nor Kai because they don’t want her. It infuriates Blair enough that she lets her guard down, and Paedyn is able to use this little slip up to go after her, and punch her to knock her out. She then continues heading to the center. Kai, on the other hand, had come across Andy in her animal form, and the two of them fight it out, with Kai using Jax’s magic and then Andy’s magic against her, before she limps off on her own. Kai then uses the Bloomer’s magic to make his way through the maze all the way until the middle, where he sees Paedyn coming across from him. But she isn’t focused on him, rather she’s looking at the figure in the center. Paedyn runs to the figure, who is none other than Adena, and Kai is confused as to what she is doing there. Unfortunately, Blair sends a branch towards Adena, killing her, and Adena dies in Paedyn’s arms. While Paedyn talks to her and reminds her that she will never forget her, Kai realizes something is wrong—the crowd is screaming in terror, and he realizes that the Resistance had made a showing.

Suddenly 4 Silencers come to the arena and all of the Elite kids are in pain from the lack of magic, but Kai notices that Paedyn is neither affected nor do the Silencers stop or surround her, and he wonders about it. Paedyn has also looked up and noticed that Calum is next to the king, but the next thing that she sees is the betrayal on Kitt’s face— he knows that she was the one who gave the information to the Resistance. All hell breaks loose when Kai uses the Silencer’s power against the silencers, and then sets them on fire, wielding Kitt’s magic. Paedyn says goodbye to Adena, leaving her body behind, and gets into the midst of the crowd to get out of the Bowl. She remembers her promise to Adena, to wear the vest that Adena had made, so she heads to the Castle, where she feigns that her leg is worse off than it is. One of the guards takes her to her room, where she finds the vest, puts it on, and starts putting on another set of shoes. A healer comes by to heal her shoe, and leaves her to rest, so she sneaks out and knowing that there is so much chaos the guards won’t be thinking about it, she goes to the garden. Kai continues fighting, glad that his parents aren’t there, but he doesn’t understand the way that Kitt is fighting—he’s always been known as the kind Prince, so the fury with which Kitt is fighting is so cold.

In the Gardens, Paedyn comes across the King, and they have a fight. He reveals to her that he has always known what and who she was but that he needed her. He spews some garbage about Elites being better than Ordinaries and that they need to be pure, and that he knew about her father because of a friend. At some point, the King has her cornered and he carves an O across her chest, around her heart, but before he can kill her, she twists his foot and then she fight him off, getting to the Sword, which she impales him with, twisting it in his heart. The King reveals to her that he never killed her father, but rather Kai was the one who killed him—it was his first mission. Paedyn doesn’t remember anything, but she cannot be certain that it was the king. She then flicks the dagger from her father into his throat, but before she can even grab it back from him, she hears footsteps, and decides to abandon the dagger. As she runs, a dagger comes flying but misses her, so she turns around to face Kai, and suddenly the memory comes back of him standing over her father’s body. They look at each other, and though Kai admits that he should end her for what she has done, he is not able to do so. So he gives her a head start, telling her that when he finds his courage, he will not hold back.

Three days later, Kitt is sitting in his father’s study, looking at the chair that his father had been sitting in. He’s still in shock and also angry that he was betrayed by Paedyn. Kai comes in, acting tentatively, and he admits that things are a little awkward between his brother and him, though he knew that they would be with him ordering his brother around, though he thought he would have more time. Kai checks in to see how Kitt is doing, and his response is that he is “doing.” Kitt in turn asks after Kai’s mom, and Kai gives him the same response. Ultimately, Kitt tells him that he is sending Kai on his first mission—to find and capture Paedyn Gray and bring him back to Kitt. There is a momentary lapse in the mask that Kai wears, with a lot of emotions flooding across his face, though he manages to hide it and nods his agreement.

Five years prior, Kai had been woken up by a guard telling him that his father had wanted to see him, and so he dressed up with hidden daggers and weapons, while keeping one out to give the false sense that he’s not armed. He knows that his father has his first mission for him, so he goes to the office, and the father tells him the house’s location and tells Kai that he needs to take care of the man inside the house. Kai rides on horseback to the house, breaks into the house, and steals into the room where he finds the man sleeping—a healer. Kai doesn’t understand why the healer would be here in the slums, as they are valuable. The man wakes up with blue eyes staring at Kai, and to cover him self up—he couldn’t do it, Kai stabs him through the heart. He then leaves the house, after the man falls off the chair, and vomits into the bushes outside of the house. He also vomits another time before he gets on a horse and rides back to his palace, where he goes to his room, telling the guard in front of his room to let his father know that the deed is done, and starts to hack at the poster bed.

My Thoughts:

Honestly, this book was very slow, and I found myself thumbing through the pages to try to get to the next chapter and find something with a bit more action. It’s not fast paced by any means so you do have to slog through quite a bit of things that happen around the main characters. I did feel like this book was a “what if Hunger Games happened, but the folks had or didn’t have powers,” so while the characters felt unique, the story felt stale, old and boring. I am grateful that the author did not make it all about the Purging Trials the whole time, the way the Hunger Games were mostly taking place inside the arena. That said, I feel like the stakes could have been higher to their survival. The only time I felt like Paedyn was at any sort of danger was during the first trial, but afterwards, the book just kind of flatlines on the adrenaline and the danger. I’m not sure if this is because it’s just supposed to be building the world and setting the stage for what comes next, but I hope that the second book is good. I also don’t understand what Adena was doing in the arena at the final trial before her death—it seems so random and out of the blue for the story, along with the fact that every single person that either died around Paedyn or by Paedyn’s hand is killed by something through the heart, which is another weird thing and makes me wonder if this was borrowed from Criminal Minds or something as the “unsub’s MO”. I assume that the short story between Book 1 and Book 2, called Powerful, goes into greater detail as to what Adena has been up to and how she ended up on that arena. Let’s go and see!

If you’re interested in reading this series, you can find the whole series for purchase here: Powerless Trilogy.