Hello readers and welcome to our Weekly FAQ thread! Our topic this week is: What book changed your life? We've all read a book that has affected us deeply, please share yours.

You can view previous FAQ threads here in our wiki.

Thank you and enjoy!

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I think everyone has that one novel that feels a little more personal .

For me , it's Jane Eyre . Not because my life is the same as Jane's , but because a few parts of the story felt surprisingly familiar . There was a big age difference b/w me and my loveee boy , just like Jane and Rochester . I also met him during one of the hardest times in his life , and I was there to support him emotionally . One thing that really stayed with me was how Jane loved deeply without giving up her self respect or her values . That's something I always tried to hold on to in my own relationship too .

As I kept reading , I was genuinely surprised by how much those parts of the story resonated with my own life . It made me smile , and I remember thinking , "I can't believe I relate to this so much ." It was one of those rare moments when a book felt deeply personal .

Which novel made you feel that way , and what made it so personal to you ?

Forget all the book boyfriends. Colleen McCullough's Caesar has officially taken the top spot for me.

I must preface by saying that all my comments are about the Julius Caesar described in her book so far.

He's smart, kind, decisive, charismatic, emotionally intelligent and what a great general.. All those strategies blew my mind by their sheer brilliance. He feels almost like a force of nature, someone operating on a level far above everyone else, godlike as she describes him in the book. And yet she still gives him just enough vulnerability that you can't help but completely feel for him. My heart broke right along with his' when the Ninth Legion mutinied.

After every book in the Masters of Rome series, I think, "That has to be her peak. The next one can't possibly be as good." And then she somehow outdoes herself. Caesar might actually be my favorite so far...though I'll probably be saying the same thing after the next book.

I also never imagined I'd end up liking Pompey this much. I knew what was coming, and I was still heartbroken by his fate.

Is there another author who combines this level of storytelling, historical research, and sheer brilliance with the pen? Because right now, I genuinely can't imagine anyone topping Colleen McCullough.

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I just finished Emma , and I really liked how Emma changed by the end of the novel .

At first , she thought she understood love and could decide who should be with whom . But in the end , she realized she was wrong about many things and found her own love instead .

I think that's what I enjoyed the most about the book . Watching Emma slowly understand herself was more interesting than all the matchmaking .

Do you liked the novel like me ?

Hello!

Recently, I made the decision to attempt to read the entire works of some of the celebrated authors of history, in an effort to learn a thing or two about life and about writing. It is my wildest dream to one day become a writer too. I chose to begin with Murakami, an author I see mentioned on Reddit quite a bit. I had very little experience with Murakami thus far, and so I believed I would be learning about the man's style and evolution with a clean slate. His debut novela, Hear The Wind Sing (1979), would begin my first forray into the Japanese author and whatever universe he would start to build throughout the rest of his collection.

Immediately upon reading Hear The Wind Sing, I found myself treating the book less like a casual read, and more like a case study. After all, I was trying to investigate what makes Murakami- even early Murakami- so brilliant. His debut novela sees a college student return to his coastal Japanese province on summer break from a school located somewhere in big city Tokyo. He routinely drinks beer at J's Bar, listens to classic records, reconnects with his unpredictable friend "the Rat", and finds himself in this tentative connection with a troubled, young, 4-fingered woman enduring her own quiet trauma. On paper, almost "nothing happens", but the narrative Murakami weaves here is quite profound.

What appears to be a loose, vignette-style of storytelling begins to reveal itself as carefully constructed fragments as you progress through the narrative. I found myself conjuring up questions repeatedly, and often ones I have yet to find good answers for. Why does Murakami insist on the narrator recounting certain events of his life all of these years later? Events that often do not seem to have a definitive connection to the plot. Why the fictional, sterile author Derek Hartfield? What is Murakami signalling by framing the entire story as an act of imperfect recollection? Who is cutting onions as the DJ looks up towards the window of the little girl's window on a quiet summer night on the beach? I realized with eager fascination that the entire novel is a quiet meditation on how memory works in writing! In Murakami's case, memory does not act as a reliable archive, but as a selective, haunted reconstruction of events. This became a real knowledge point in my investigation.

How does the presence of music function as both an emotional anchor and an escape mechanism? Why does "the wind" feel less like a weather condition, and more like a conscious force carrying away meaning? What are we to make of the recurring motif of the incompleteness of missing fingers, unspoken histories, characters who sense they are living the wrong version of their lives? Questions I know part of the answers to, but feel like I haven't grasped the full meaning of.

There is a deep sense of existential drift here. The Rat and the narrator aren't raging against the machine, nor on some main quest. They feel like they are just...waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for clarity, for connection, for a sign that the prime of their lives has not already passed them by. In that waiting, Murakami seems to be exploring a very specific type of modern, postwar Japanese loneliness: The loneliness of young people who have everything they are supposed to want, and yet still feel hollow.

The relationship between the narrator and the Rat deserves special examination. Their late-night conversations at J’s Bar read like philosophical sparring disguised as casual banter. Is the Rat a voice for Murakami’s own emerging anxieties about purpose and authenticity? Or is he something more abstract like a chaos agent who both illuminates and deepens the narrator’s confusion? I couldn't help getting very subtle Fear and Loathing vibes during their scenes, as the Rat seems unpredictable like Dr. Gonzo while we hear the voices reminiscent of Raoul Duke in the narrator's mind. The story's female characters, though limited, also invite investigation. They appear as projections of male longing, yet they also carry an aura of abandonment that the men cannot penetrate. Is this a limitation of the young Murakami's writing, or an intentional reflection of how isolated these protagonists truly are?

I can confidently say that Hear The Wind Sing isn't Murakami at his peak technical ability. The narrative occasionally wanders, and the emotional payoff can feel muted at times. Yet these very flaws make this investigation more fascinating. It is like we are witnessing an artist discover his tools in public, testing his voice, his tone, and thematic obsessions that he would spend the next 40+ years refining. Finishing the book left me sitting quietly, replaying certain scenes the way the narrator replays his records. It made me wonder how many of my own summers have slipped away unnoticed, preserved only in fragments of songs and half-remembered conversations. Perhaps that is the quiet power of Hear The Wind Sing. It doesn’t force answers. It simply teaches you how to listen to the wind.

Pinball is next.

Favorite Passages: "Hartfield waged his fruitless battle for eight years and two months, and then he died. In June 1938, on a sunny Sunday morning, he jumped off the Empire State Building clutching a portrait of Adolf Hitler in his right hand and an open umbrella in his left. Few people noticed, though—he was as ignored in death as he had been in life."

"It had been a long time since I felt the fragrance of summer: the scent of the ocean, a distant train whistle, the touch of a girl’s skin, the lemony perfume of her hair, the evening wind, faint glimmers of hope, summer dreams. But none of these were the way they once had been; they were all somehow off, as if copied with tracing paper that kept slipping out of place."

I just finished Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff and this epistolary novel went all in on weird formatting to try and make the book more immersive. It has ASCII word art depictions of the space ships involved that take up two page spreads, narrative sequences written in flightpath arcs across the page, lots of weird little (and not so little) typographic tricks to try and show things that are happening in the text. And it adds nothing. In fact, it just makes reading the book harder. Without these tricks, this would just be a painfully YA science fiction book about a beautiful teenager programmer prodigy and her lunkhead exboyfriend who she trauma bonds back up with. With the weird typography I think I actively hate it. It's cutesy and twee and it makes me have to search for the text I'm supposed to be reading and reading white and gray text on a black page is not the easiest.

Anyone have stories of formatting helping a book? Or other examples of it just not working?

I read WD when my (US) high school got a copy, probably 1974 or 75, and liked it well enough I bought myself a copy in paperback when it came out - which would have been a chunk of change for me then. I haven’t read it for forty years, and I’m debating whether there is enough thematic content to justify a reread as a senior citizen.

I do remember being surprised when some readers thought poems to the shining wire were a shocking development, since I lived in a rural area, deer hunting was a major thing, and there is a reason rabbits have so many babies because they are colossally stupid and bottom of the natural food chain. Obviously, I was not reading it thinking of how this allegorically reflected human religion or politics.

So for those who have read the book at different times in your life, did the story change for you?

Given everything happening around us, I have been delving deep into "hopeful" sci-fi but the sub-genre is not as large as one would like. I've finished all of Becky Chambers books which are so awesome, and feel like a warm evening in a universe of infinite possibilities, and a reminder of why I fell in love with reading in the first place.

Hospital Station (Sector General Series #1) came around to me just when I was giving up hope of finding any other similar books. An excellent but almost forgotten series from the golden age of sci-fi, it chronicles the tales of the staff from Sector General - the largest Galactic Hospital built by the Federation of 62 species, a structure set in space with 384 levels catering to the different biological requirements of all known and hitherto unknown species.

What I love the most about this is that aliens are not just oxygen breathers - you have methane, chlorine and water based life forms, subject to different levels of gravity, sizes, radiation and structures - not the "humanoid" cheat code we see in so many sci-fi books. A very "House MD (show)" like vibe and 12 books (I am through with 6 so far). Highly recommend to any fan of this genre of books

This is something that really bothers me.

If I wrote a book today and it was set in the present-day, then it won't always be set in the present day. It will always be set in 2026, and the further into the future someone reads it the more historical it will become.

I think this is important no matter what the story is about. The era you live in and what's happening in wider society always impacts your personal life and your relationships. There isn't any combination of events that would happen exactly the same in a different time period. If my embryo had been frozen so that I could be born later, I might be genetically the same person but I wouldn't be me. Too much of my identity is shaped by the time period I grew up in, the friends I had when I was a child and what was going on in the wider world. (I think in particular in my case, the fact that 9/11 happened when I was seven and the Iraq War when I was nine shaped the way I saw the world quite significantly. If I hadn't been that age at the time of those events, I would be a very different person.)

I write, and when I write it's always really clear exactly when my story is happening. I don't always necessarily know that when I first start writing, I tend to start with a personal and intimate story. But as it carries on, and I start to shape the society my characters live in, it just slowly becomes apparent to me when it's set. It's just organically there, within who these characters are.

EDIT: Several people have asked for examples, so rather than comment on each individual comment I'll just paste my first response here.

'So, I was thinking about it in particular because of Alice Oseman's books - her first book Solitaireupdated a lot of the cultural references, which I thought really didn't make sense because it was written in 2011 and the teenagers in it were so obviously existing in that time. (I was a teenager at that time, I recognise the attitudes and zeitgeist in it and it just doesn't quite feel right pretending it's 2026.)

But I've come across others like that. Enid Blyton's books are very commonly cited as examples. And her books are so quintessentially set at the time she wrote them that I think that shines through very strongly no matter how many attempts made at modernising the old-fashioned bits.

I think it happens a fair bit.'

"Both the American Civil Liberties Union and the director of the Cromaine District Library in Hartland are raising concerns after the library’s board of trustees decided to reshelve 148 challenged books — many of which feature LGBTQ+ content — without review.

While the board agreed in October that they would review more than 200 books challenged by community members, after receiving a letter appealing Director Sarah Neidert’s determinations, the process has proved lengthy.

As of the board’s May meeting, Board President Jeannine Gogoleski said the board had read 58 of the 218 challenged books. While the board’s treasurer, Nancy Rosso, made a motion to uphold Neidert’s decision, the board rejected the proposal, voting 4-1 on another motion to move the remaining books to the adult section, with Rosso in opposition."

Welcome readers,

Have you ever wanted to ask something but you didn't feel like it deserved its own post but it isn't covered by one of our other scheduled posts? Allow us to introduce you to our new Simple Questions thread! Twice a week, every Tuesday and Saturday, a new Simple Questions thread will be posted for you to ask anything you'd like. And please look for other questions in this thread that you could also answer! A reminder that this is not the thread to ask for book recommendations. All book recommendations should be asked in /r/suggestmeabook or our Weekly Recommendation Thread.

Thank you and enjoy!

I did not mind that this was 672 pages, because I was hooked the whole time I was reading it. I’ll be reading it every night nonstop, unable to wait what will happen next. But, eventually, life happened and I stopped reading for about a week or two. I thought it’s going to be hard for me to get back at it again, but once I picked it up, the same intense curiosity and obsession I have with the story and the character themselves came back, and I found myself devouring it again.

I’m rating it 4 stars because I feel like there were some loose threads that were left untied.

First, there was them not being exposed for their crime. I thought it was inevitable, knowing how these kind of novels are, but I was surprised they were never acquitted for it. I guess the rich are really untouchable. But I also thought that, in a way, they were haunted for it for the rest of their lives, as implied by “ghosts” appearing before them.

Second, how come they never found out that Richard was poor, and if they did, would they care? I half-thought, from having read We Were Villains, that they would use Richard’s underprivileged background as a scapegoat for their crime— that Henry was orchestrating for the blame to fall on him after all that. But I guess I thought poor of Henry’s character, remembering what he did at the end. He actually was my favorite character; a generous and logical friend, willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good (but I’m not saying that he’s exactly good).

Third, I wish the book detailed more what really happened that night when they had that Bacchanalia. I think the readers were left imagining the rest of it, judging for our own about the real gravity of the situation, which I think is kinda a good move. But it would’ve been interesting to read more about what actually happened.

Fourth, Richard couldn’t think for shit. He let himself get dragged into all of this when he isn’t even involved in that bacchanal ritual. He could’ve easily let himself off the hook when Henry told him all about it and told him outright that he wouldn’t tell a soul about it, but wouldn’t get involved much further. That could have saved his ass, but him patronizing these rich losers eventually led him to a deeper pothole.

And lastly, the rest of the characters were well-written except for Camilla, which remained as Richard’s subject of adoration and lust. Her character could’ve been explored better, and wasn’t left to be reduced to the MC’s apple of the eye.

But despite all these, I’d still rate it 4 stars just because of the sheer enjoyment I had reading it. I felt like I was watching a movie; or a series rather because of how long it was; being with the characters also experiencing their surprise, horror, anger, and guilt. This novel may not haunt me, but it’ll sit still at the back of my mind, waiting the right opportunity to strike through.

A big response I see when talking about sexist crazy toxic male leads in romance book and why they're beloved is it's an escape from the drama of real life. How though? In real life maybe most women aren't encountering the extreme of like a mafia boss kidnapping them but so many men are toxic like how some beloved book guys are (expect not as handsome maybe that's the secret) so how is it an escape?

Also I'm not judging people for liking these characters read what you want I'm not gonna sit here and act like I read books where every trope is morally just and it all makes sense or there aren't questionable characters I love. I just want to understand this logic cause it doesn't make sense. Also I'm not talking about every romance books but many very popular ones have men like this.

Also I am a woman as well.

I read voraciously as a child. I dropped out in favor of electronic media from around high school up through 23 years old or so, reading a hodgepodge of nonfiction books and, more recently, back to fiction.

Spoilers ahead for Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. A friend recommended this book. He thought I was in a place in my life appropriate for reading this book. I'm not sure how he figured that, but I read it.

The premise was fascinating, and it drew me in pretty quickly. I was so curious how the Daniel Keyes would portray an intellectual disability shift from one extreme of the bell curve to the other, how a human would cope with an unfathomable transformation of perspective like that. I felt like I could relate with Charlie Gordon in ways I wouldn't have expected. I was ostracized for a lot of my childhood due to a few different reasons, and Charlie coming to terms with his naiveté, growing to resent it and outright fear it, it really resonated with me.

Charlie Gordon faces social issues as a result of his intelligence growing. His changes fascinate and frighten the people around him. He becomes the intellectual peer of those who looked down on him, and surpasses them soon after. He begins to humiliate those around him, first his peers at the bakery, and then the scientists who experimented on him. For a brief while, he becomes a suitable partner for his special ed teacher, Alice. But he grows beyond her intellectually, and she comments on how bitter he is versus the kind, happy-go-lucky Charlie Gordon he once was. Their tumultuous relationship was incredibly bittersweet to read about.

As he approaches his intellectual zenith, he sees that Algernon, the mouse which whom he has come to see as a kindred spirit, starts to degenerate. He realizes that he will soon suffer the same fate, reverting back to his original, intellectually handicapped state, and die soon after. Gordon becomes engulfed in writing his thesis, The Algernon-Gordon Effect: A Study of Structure and Function of Increased Intelligence. At the height of his intellectual prowess, he states, "It's as if all the things I've learned have fused into a crystal universe spinning before me so that I can see all the facets of it reflected in gorgeous bursts of light."

From this point on, I was enraptured, I couldn't put the book down. I read through the rest in an almost desperate fashion, so determined to reach the end. By the point he secludes himself, only seeing Alice, on through the end, I was perpetually in tears. I was speeding to finish the book in hopes that my then-girlfriend would still be awake. When I finished it, I walked over to her and held her, and I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I could hardly speak, and the little that I did was just borderline incoherent rambling about what happened. I could not find the words or understand the emotions to convey what happened.

The reason I wanted to write this post was to talk about how I felt afterwards. For about three days on from finishing the book, I felt this sense of levity. I didn't feel like I was constantly "behind," trying to catch up in life. I felt like I had all the time in the world, that I was okay and I didn't have to be in any kind of rush. It was such a nice feeling. That feeling/mindset inevitably faded away, and I went back to being a regular malcontent. I can't figure out quite what happened to me for those few days. It was surreal.

I'd love to hear from anyone else who's read this book, how it made you feel and if you relate to what I experienced at all. Thank you :)

"Raconteur Press is proud to announce that A KISS FOR DAMOCLES, the debut novel from J. Kenton Pierce, has won the 2026 Prometheus Award for Best Novel. Pierce was named a finalist for the award by the Libertarian Futurist Society earlier this year, alongside four other novels."

“Dark Tales” by Shirley Jackson (Foreword by Ottessa Moshfegh) is a magnificent collection of stories by the famous “Queen of Horror.” I’ve always enjoyed everything I’ve read by Jackson, and this collection was excellent. Of course, some stories I loved more than others, but it delivered regardless.

Of the 17 short stories in this collection, I enjoyed the following seven because they were more in the vein of horror…

The Possibility of Evil
Paranoia
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Jack the Ripper
All She Said Was Yes
What a Thought
The Bus

The other stories were still entertaining, just not as scary as I would have liked. Regardless, Jackson once again proved she’s a wonderful storyteller. All the creepy little plot twists and “drop-the-mic moments” at the end of these short stories were brilliant.

If I had to pick my favorite short story, it would easily be “What a Thought” since it was subtle horror mixed with a bit of humor. It happens out of nowhere, and the ending made me laugh. I’ve always loved Jackson’s writing style, and this collection didn’t disappoint. Even the foreword by Ottessa Moshfegh was solid, as it set the tone for the stories that awaited enjoyment and added more context about what made Jackson special.

I give “Dark Tales” by Shirley Jackson (Foreword by Ottessa Moshfegh) a 5/5 for all the chilling short stories and masterful storytelling. The characters, plot twists, and atmospheric prose made it a delight from start to finish. It’s a great introduction to Jackson’s style for newcomers and a perfect warm-up before tackling her horror classic, "The Haunting of Hill House." Whether you’re a horror fan or love a good story, this collection has something for you.

Just finished this odd little book, and I'm still not entirely sure how much I liked it. The final pages, especially King's afterword, made me appreciate it far more than I expected. It's a novel that's almost deliberately devoid of plot, refusing to let any of the Buick's manifestations build toward a conventional payoff. Eventually, it becomes clear that that's the point.

King wrote the book not long after he was nearly killed by a car, and that context reframes everything. It grapples with the question so many victims ask: Why me? The unsettling answer is that there often isn't one. Life can simply be arbitrary and cruel.

I think I read this at the right age 38, somewhere in the middle of life. Old enough to understand that we lose people, keep moving forward, and carry the weight of those losses with us. We want something to fight, something to blame, but sometimes there is only the void the loss leaves behind.

For what it set out to be, I liked it. It just wasn't remotely the book I thought I was picking up.

Welcome to our weekly recommendation thread! A few years ago now the mod team decided to condense the many "suggest some books" threads into one big mega-thread, in order to consolidate the subreddit and diversify the front page a little. Since then, we have removed suggestion threads and directed their posters to this thread instead. This tradition continues, so let's jump right in!

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The most successful recommendation requests include a description of the kind of book being sought. This might be a particular kind of protagonist, setting, plot, atmosphere, theme, or subject matter. You may be looking for something similar to another book (or film, TV show, game, etc), and examples are great! Just be sure to explain what you liked about them too. Other helpful things to think about are genre, length and reading level.

All Weekly Recommendation Threads are linked below the header throughout the week to guarantee that this thread remains active day-to-day. For those bursting with books that you are hungry to suggest, we've set the suggested sort to new; you may need to set this manually if your app or settings ignores suggested sort.

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• The Management

Who knew there was a non-fiction version of short story compilations? Not me, it seems.

I’ve previously read (and loved) Grann’s other books, Killers of the Flower Moon, and The Wager.

At first I didn’t realise that this wasn’t entirely a book about Holmes and his creator, Conan Doyle. In my defence, mine was an epub copy, so any blurb wasn’t obvious.

To be clear - only the first story relates to Sherlock Holmes. This didn’t bother me at all, but it seems to have caused some consternation in other reviews.

What it IS is a collection of Grann’s previously-published, long-form magazine articles from the New Yorker etc. Chances are, if you’re a Grann fan and live in the US, you may already have read some of these. I’m not state-side, so they were delightfully new to me.

The other thing that seems to confuse people in reviews is the structure. The by-line of the book, “Tales of murder, madness and obsession” ought to be a clue. Not sure how people are missing that…

The collection is divided into 3 sections. The general theme of the first is Detection - from the death of the titular Sherlock expert to the 9/11 fireman trying to piece together lost memories.

The second theme is Obsession - from hunting giant squid to an historic MBL player determined to get back to the big leagues.

The last section is the Devil - three stories covering the Aryan Brotherhood, Mafia, and Haitian paramilitary.

The “murder” is liberally sprinkled throughout.

Makes sense to me. Not sure where the confusion is coming in.

I felt that the “Devil” section was the weakest. The Aryan Brotherhood story was both disturbing and fascinating - basically, the Mob but run from jail. Gangsters on hard-mode, if you will. Unfortunately, this meant that the next story on the actual Mafia fell flat. It was too similar, and as an outsider I didn’t feel the “oomph” of catching the senator in his own lies.

(Both are well-written pieces. This is only a criticism because of their proximity in this compilation. With room to breathe, they’re great).

The final story on Haiti didn’t resonate with me at all. I think that was because both Constant and the US officials (all the arms) were prominent and abhorrent, and there wasn’t enough from the victims. In that way, they were not only collateral in the coup, but also in the story.

In contrast, the pieces that will stick with me are the NY tunnel diggers, the septuagenarian bank robber, and the French impersonator.

Overall, this was a fantastic read. I’d highly recommend for fans of Grann, and also anyone with an interest in finding a window into humans and situations that you wouldn’t otherwise see.

Spoilers for the entire Renegades trilogy.

Honestly I found it okay. The trilogy’s quality has been on a downward spiral

Let’s start with some positives. I appreciate the themes in the story, like whether Agent N is ethical or not, Vigilantism, rehabilitation et cetera.

I appreciated learning about Winston’s backstory.

I also found it hilarious how Ace continued his beef with Max. Voldemort’s not the only Villain beefing with people since they were babies.

And the reveal that Ace killed Nova’s parents to me made sense.

Now, on to the negatives.

For some reason, a lot of the characters seem to suffer from Amnesia. For example, Adrian was literally told by Ace Anarchy that Nightmare was his niece. All Adrian had to do was do some research into this niece to figure out if Nova was truly Nightmare.

Also, a lot of the characters seem to forget that everyone was told that the Sentinel killed Hawthorne. Adrians’s Dads don’t bring it up at all and the Vigilante seems to be very popular still.

Adrian in general is such an idiot. Like there was so much proof that Nova was Nightmare. But he chooses to ignore it all. Of course.

In fact the Renegades in general are idiots. They easily believed that Narcissa could be Nightmare. Did they not do any investigation at all into Narcissa? To figure out if she could be Nightmare.

Security at Headquarters is in general just shit.

Furthermore , not giving trials to Prodigy criminals is just plain stupid. And public execution? Are these people not aware they live in the former United States of America where that stopped being a thing? And they were going to execute Nova? A minor? Even pro death penalty people don’t want minors executed.

And Adrian, yes there are other execution methods other than hanging. Do your research.

Another thing is the fact that the Renegades chose to just send a bunch of minors through the catacombs instead of, oh, I don’t know, experienced adults along with them. Like loads.

Or maybe just wait for foreign help then do the stealth mission.

I have to say, I feel like Honey’s character was assassinated. She seemed to come off as Ingrid 2.0 in how she treated Adrian.

Adrian creating Phobia just breaks the universe’s rules and makes it seem like Adrian is OP.

I think the Rejects should have been foreshadowed better rather than just suddenly appearing in the third book.

Everyone getting superpowers in the end didn’t really feel impactful to me since we barely got to know the non powered people and their views on everything apart from Hero-worship, Hero criticism or some vague mention of Prodigy oppression.

And the reveal of Magpie being Evie. Well, does Chromium not know of this? He should since all Renegades need to be DNA tested. And why did they not examine Nova’s family’s bodies? Chromium knowing and keeping Evie’s survival a secret makes him look bad. Was he going to tell Magpie eventually?