BooksOfTheMoon

Finally! We get to see our heroes doing something other than bickering. As hoped, Sever’s invasion and destruction of LIO HQ spurs them into action. Admittedly, that action is initially to go and hide out with Wave. But once they regroup, we finally get our Avengers moment, as the combined force goes on the offensive.

There’s some nice character beats here, especially with Mary, who has matured an awful lot in the course of these books. She finds herself consoling one of the new recruits, and eventually moves into more of a mentoring role. We get plenty of Nathan as well, but, slightly disappointingly, no Jeff Hayes, who helped out a lot in the last book. He only gets a mention in passing here. I’d started to become quite fond of his sardonic humour.

Dolly has been quite an interesting character throughout. She’s a perfect example of everybody being the hero of their own story. Despite everything she’s done, she thinks she’s done nothing wrong and that if only she can get the Pearl Knife back, the world will worship her as a hero (and she’s willing to make them, if they don’t). I’m glad that Eloise got more of her dad’s personality than her mum’s!

I enjoyed this series quite a lot, despite some frustration with earlier books and characters making some really bad decisions. It was nice to get the big climax and have everyone play a role in that and see the lead up to that climax. I do enjoy a good superhero story, and Swed has created a very enjoyable world with the League of Independent Operatives.

In the penultimate book in the League of Independent Operatives series, LIO has got the Pearl Knife back, although Eloise is still too afraid of it to really use it, America has properly got its hate on for people with superpowers, and Thanos Sever finally turns up.

This one is mostly about America, or, at least, the American government, losing its collective head over people with superpowers, leading to a full on underground railroad to Canada, which Mary and the LIO stumble upon by accident and end up trying to help all these people escape. At the same time, Sever makes his way to Earth and runs into Dolly and the OG LIO who scheme to recover the Pearl Knife and take over the League again (while also planning on double-crossing Sever, because of course they are).

Despite being very focussed on the US, I was glad to see at least a passing reference to how other parts of the world are reacting to the US’s growing intolerance, particularly Germany’s outrage. Having been there once, they, at least, have learned from history, something that the US repeatedly fails to do. I mean, they even wear red armbands. It’s not exactly subtle!

After spending lots of books refusing to communicate, the various relationships here start to settle down, and we finally have a hope of seeing our Avengers moment where the bickering stops and everyone focusses on stopping the greater threat.

Swed is great at writing fast-paced, thrilling stories that keep you invested in the characters. I’m very much looking forward to them prodding serious buttock in the next, and final, book.

After the events of the previous two books, Mary is welcomed back into the LIO fold, just as aliens steal the Pearl Knife. But Mary no longer trusts her instincts so refuses to join the hunt for it, preferring to remain in a support role back at HQ. Obviously this doesn’t go well.

In many ways, this third book in the series is quite frustrating. Partly that’s because it’s the middle book in the series, so it has to set up a lot of stuff for the rest of the series, but it also means that it can’t really offer much in the way of resolution.

One ongoing theme in these books is the way that people fail to talk to each other because they make assumptions about how the other person feels or thinks. This is a trope that I find very frustrating, but then the characters in this series tend to be fairly young. They’re still making the mistakes that will lead them to mature and become better people and angst fits well in that puzzle as well.

There’s also a strong fear of otherness theme through the EAEA. This is something we know well from the X-Men, where mutants are hated and feared. Here, the EAEA wants to start “registering” enhanced humans, and we all know where that leads, right? It does feel like it’s battering you over the head with that, but then we live in times where that’s the level of subtlety that we need.

For most of the book, I really didn’t feel that Sloan could be the sort of character who could be the protagonist of her own series. I found her irritating, incapable and lacking in any leadership quality. That starts to change towards the end of the book, and now I’m actually thinking that I might consider picking up the Parse Galaxy series.

I’m fully invested now though. I’m over half way, so unless the next book does something that makes me throw my Kindle across the room, I’m in for the long haul.

After the revelations of Alter Ego, Mary has left the League of Independent Operatives, and her budding romance with Nathan Pearce, behind and is dedicating her life to finding and capturing the “retired” members of the League, who she blames for her parents’ death. I found Mary much more difficult to like this time round. She’s closed in on herself, is completely on her own and is making worse and worse decisions. Like the decision to go rogue and hunt down the superpowered retirees wasn’t a bad one to start with. Even her AI assistant disapproves of how she’s capturing and imprisoning them without trial.

This book also introduces us to Nathan’s dysfunctional family (honestly, this lot should really have had family therapy after the whole tricked-into-delivering-a-bomb thing. But since they didn’t, it feels like Nathan’s sister, Chloe, is well on her way to being the next big bad for the series). We also get to see more of Eloise and her inability to control the Pearl Knife, leading to a doozy of a revelation.

Also, there were several chapters that seemed to be from a different book. Those were labelled “Sloane” and were somewhere in the Parse Galaxy. Since I know the author has written other books in that setting, I initially wondered if some chapters had ended up in the wrong book. But it comes together at the end. Although the snippets we get to see of Sloane and her crew don’t exactly enthuse me for the Parse Galaxy books, which seem to feature the same characters.

I wanted to throw the book across the room a couple of times here, usually at Mary doing something stupid or stubborn. I honestly don’t understand why she tried to attack Nathan after the encounter with The Trap. And her later change of heart. It didn’t really seem to fit to me.

It was interesting to see some of the “retirees” from LIO though, and their powers. Nothing particularly unique, but interesting nonetheless. We don’t really get much characterisation for any of them, other than The Trap, but it contrasts well with Nathan’s visits to LIO’s prison and getting to know some of the prisoners there, and showing their humanity.

This one doesn’t even pretend to conclude anything and ends on a massive cliffhanger. I’m intrigued enough to read the next in series though.

Our protagonist in this superhero story is basically a gender-swapped Batman. A billionaire playgirl, complete with dead parents, lots of cool gadgets and tech, and no powers. When her parents are killed, a secret group of superheroes takes Mary O’Sullivan in and raises her. Now, she’s struggling to fit in with the League of Independent Operatives and after breaking protocol one too many times (this time to bring in a young woman with powers, after saving her from her father), she’s sent to cool off for a while in her other life.

We mostly alternative between the PoV of Mary, and Eloise, aka the Pearl Knife, and (newish) head of the League, after having both the Knife and the position passed down by her mother. Mary is frustrated by the way the Eloise is handling the League, thinking her to be too rule-bound to get things done. Eloise worries Mary is flighty and does things without thinking. Both are right, but they don’t talk about it with each other, which leads to conflict, especially when a terrorist organisation, thought to be long defunct, returns.

I eyeroll a bit these days over the “flouncing off rather than talking to each other” trope which is prominent here, but it’s a good way to drive the plot, even if I do want to yell at them to just phone each other. The third protagonist is Nathan Pearce, a police officer with no powers, who’s obsessed with independent operators and who has serious chemistry with Mary. Hormones make people do stupid things, and there was more eyerolling involved in almost every scene these two had together.

But despite all the eyerolling, the book does hold up well. Mary, Eloise and Nathan are all likeable characters, and there’s some exciting action sequences. I had thought it was going to be a pretty bog-standard superhero story, but there’s actually a neat twist near the end which I hadn’t seen coming and which I enjoyed.

One thing to note is that the book definitely isn’t self-contained and ends without much in the way of resolution. But I’ll be definitely reading the next book in the series.