Review: Zeroes

Zeroes by Scott Westerfeld
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'll be honest - Scott Westerfeld hasn't been doing it for me lately. I didn't love how his World War I steampunk thing ended, the Uglies series petered out for me, I found Afterworlds to be almost unreadable, but I still reached for this one when I had an opportunity to read it. Like with his previous books, the ideas are ultimately better than the execution, but this one was certainly more solid (and it might be a credit to the co-writers on board).

The story is about a bunch of teens who have some special powers. One has an inner omnipotent voice, for example, and he's able to disrupt a bank robbery using it. He meets others with similar power strengths and it throws him and others into a fairly major situation.

The idea behind this is for some sort of new, modern superpower tale for a technological age, and it works at some points and not others. I had trouble accepting the stakes, though, as well as just going along for the ride. A book like this kind of needs to transport you away a bit, and this didn't quite do it. I feel like I have nothing to say about it because, as fine as it was, it really left no impact on me.

Fans of Westerfeld will probably enjoy this. There is an X-Men sort of feel to it in a way, too, so there's that angle, but it's just okay.

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