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A review by drtlovesbooks
The Ascension: A Super Human Clash by Michael Carroll
3.0
What it's about: After seemingly destroying the unstoppable tyrant Krodin, young heroes Abby, Lance, Roz, and Thunder try to return to their lives. But things have changed.
Lance's world has been completely turned upside-down, as he no longer has a family. But while the others try to figure out how to move forward with what they've learned about their abilities, something strange happens. Suddenly, all the heroes who fought Krodin experience an odd sensation, and the world changes around them. Suddenly there is surveillance everywhere, people are marching in silent lines down the streets, a paramilitary force seems to be enforcing strict rules.
And the person in charge is Krodin.
As the group tries to find each other and work out what has happened, they find themselves in a race against time. The United States is about to be invaded by a coalition of other nations bent on defeating Krodin. The death toll will be catastrophic if the heroes can't figure out a way to take Krodin down.
But how do you stop someone who is undefeatable?
What I thought: This installment of the series was pretty entertaining. But there was one moment that kind of took me out of the story. Carroll tends to fit the pieces of his puzzles together pretty carefully, and there's this one passage in the book where there's a bit that feels like I skipped a page. I backed up and re-read the section a few times to see if I was missing some detail that would make it more logical, but I couldn't find anything, and it kind of took me out of the story; I spent a good part of the rest of the book keeping one eye peeled for further disjunctions.
I am a bit ambivalent about how Carroll is addressing death and killing in this particular book. There's one death that just seems to come out of nowhere for no particular reason; it's completely unnecessary. And there are several discussions among the characters about whether it's okay to kill for a greater purpose, or even accidentally. I appreciate that several of these teens are not willing to take a life - I think that's a good choice. But to put the characters into literal life-or-death situations and have them react by carefully considering how they need to avoid casualties doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the realism of the story.
The end of this story also sets up another half a dozen possible storylines for future installments, depending on which way Carroll decides to go with things. But it seems like it's going to reintroduce some issues from the last book, if the story continues to unfold in a way that follows a semi-logical path. So I'm curious to see what happens.
Why I rated it like I did: This book had some more obvious flaws that the previous installment. I also realized in looking this book up on Goodreads that there actually seem to be several prequels and at least one sequel. I may try to track them down to see where things start and where they went from here.
Lance's world has been completely turned upside-down, as he no longer has a family. But while the others try to figure out how to move forward with what they've learned about their abilities, something strange happens. Suddenly, all the heroes who fought Krodin experience an odd sensation, and the world changes around them. Suddenly there is surveillance everywhere, people are marching in silent lines down the streets, a paramilitary force seems to be enforcing strict rules.
And the person in charge is Krodin.
As the group tries to find each other and work out what has happened, they find themselves in a race against time. The United States is about to be invaded by a coalition of other nations bent on defeating Krodin. The death toll will be catastrophic if the heroes can't figure out a way to take Krodin down.
But how do you stop someone who is undefeatable?
What I thought: This installment of the series was pretty entertaining. But there was one moment that kind of took me out of the story. Carroll tends to fit the pieces of his puzzles together pretty carefully, and there's this one passage in the book where there's a bit that feels like I skipped a page. I backed up and re-read the section a few times to see if I was missing some detail that would make it more logical, but I couldn't find anything, and it kind of took me out of the story; I spent a good part of the rest of the book keeping one eye peeled for further disjunctions.
I am a bit ambivalent about how Carroll is addressing death and killing in this particular book. There's one death that just seems to come out of nowhere for no particular reason; it's completely unnecessary. And there are several discussions among the characters about whether it's okay to kill for a greater purpose, or even accidentally. I appreciate that several of these teens are not willing to take a life - I think that's a good choice. But to put the characters into literal life-or-death situations and have them react by carefully considering how they need to avoid casualties doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the realism of the story.
The end of this story also sets up another half a dozen possible storylines for future installments, depending on which way Carroll decides to go with things. But it seems like it's going to reintroduce some issues from the last book, if the story continues to unfold in a way that follows a semi-logical path. So I'm curious to see what happens.
Why I rated it like I did: This book had some more obvious flaws that the previous installment. I also realized in looking this book up on Goodreads that there actually seem to be several prequels and at least one sequel. I may try to track them down to see where things start and where they went from here.