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A review by daumari
Not Your Backup by C.B. Lee
4.0
In a world of meta-humans with fantastic powers, it's hard to be the muggle and feel useless. However, Emma Robledo is clever and detail-oriented, always coming up with a plan of attack to move forward. While not trying to save the world/their nation, Emma also wrestles with her feelings of attraction or lack thereof in a sincere questioning arc (as I haven't really had this experience, it doesn't seem like my place to determine whether or not it's authentic, but! it does feel like it progressed during the book at a natural pace). As far as I can tell as an outsider, this feels like good ace-spec representation, something much-needed for young readers who might not have the words/tools yet to describe how they feel (or, for grownups new to the concepts too!)
The end is a hopeful note, but still cliffhanger-y- can't wait to see how C.B. Lee wraps this quartet up!
The most minor of distracting thoughts: I don't really have a good grasp on how fast vehicles can move in the future of 2123, so while our heroes use abandoned pre-Collective highways to get between places, I still sort of feel like it would take time to go from Nevada up into Idaho-ish, then to Louisiana and finally New York? Plus Canada? Travel time is mentioned, but not dwelt upon because otherwise we'd have the ceaseless camping of HP 7, but our characters sure do move around a lot.
The end is a hopeful note, but still cliffhanger-y- can't wait to see how C.B. Lee wraps this quartet up!
The most minor of distracting thoughts: I don't really have a good grasp on how fast vehicles can move in the future of 2123, so while our heroes use abandoned pre-Collective highways to get between places, I still sort of feel like it would take time to go from Nevada up into Idaho-ish, then to Louisiana and finally New York? Plus Canada? Travel time is mentioned, but not dwelt upon because otherwise we'd have the ceaseless camping of HP 7, but our characters sure do move around a lot.