I have complicated feelings about this book. I read it cause it's one of my wife's nostalgic books from high school. Talking with them, I can see the things that made them like it, so I'll start with those.

Victor is an ExtraOrdinary (EO) who can control pain. I can easily understand how Victor's odd and detached relationship with pain/his own physical body would be revolutionary to a young person dealing with chronic pain. The other good depictions of chronic pain that come quickly to my mind all came out very recently.

There is also a found family element to Victor's revenge band that does a lot of heavy lifting. Sometimes a family is a prickly asshole, a giant burly hacker, a 12-yr-old, and her giant dog. The dynamic is not perfect, but it is undeniable that these people care for each other, and that they would all be worse off alone. There is a hopeful message threaded throughout that you're only unredeemable if you stop trying. Victor is not a good person. But he's good to His People, and they love him for it.

The worldbuilding of EOs is also Fascinating. Getting powers from a near-death experience is not Entirely unique, but the idea that those powers are based on your last thought before you died is So Fun, especially for a darker series like this.

That being said, I think there are a lot of downsides to this book. The beginning has a LOT of flashbacks to Victor and Eli (the main antagonist) as college students. I understand this is meant to flesh out their relationship/backstory, but they were ROUGH to get through. "Entitled White College Boy" is one of my Least Favorite genres, and having to read so much of it was a SLOG. Also, I don't think it added that much to the story, and the important parts could have been told much more succinctly by the main characters in retrospect. Even if Schwab wanted to keep the flashbacks, they should have been Way Shorter.

My biggest problem with the book is the choices made surrounding Eli, the main antagonist.

Eli's EO power is regeneration. While it is perhaps normal superhero fare for him to test the limits of his power in various ways, Schwab puts way more of it on screen than I am comfortable with. It is extremely triggering for a man to carve up his arms with a knife repeatedly onscreen, whether or not he will regenerate afterwards. In at least one of the scenes, he is also in some level of emotional distress, which makes the correlation to standard self-harm even stronger.

Eli is also a serial killer. He believes EOs (except for him) are an abomination in the eyes of God, and that he has been given a supernatural mission to hunt them down. Schwab gives us way more time in his head than I want, including a scene where he hunts down and murders a college girl. There was no need to put us through that, or the thoughts he was having during it. I simply do not want to be in the heads of men abusing/killing women, and I would have hoped an AFAB author would respect that. However, I understand that this might be a personal opinion that others don't share.

Overall, my review is mixed. There are elements worth your time, but only you can decide if you're willing to wade through entitled college boys and triggering content to get there.

Does the dog die? A complicated question, but I promise he ends the book alive.

CW Self-harm Suicide Sexual Assault/Dubious Consent Harm to children Harm to animals Serial Killer POV Mind Control Addiction Torture Corrupt Police Domestic violence High-control religion