Although the book does make a point for Danny to declare herself a lesbian, there are no significant (or insignificant) romantic relationships in the story. I really appreciated that even though Danny's superpowers make her almost invincible, it never feels like there are no stakes. Though I have trans friends who have transitioned, looking into the soul-level identity from this perspective was particularly eye-opening and needed. But in this case, the wish fulfillment ends up entrenching some extraordinarily problematic ideas of sex and gender for trans and cis women alike.

I'll not claim expertise on how things work from where you're from, but in my experience of the world, that is a poor choice of behavior. For me, this book feels like a first draft that was published without any changes made by an editor.And Daniels makes it clear that even though Danny lucked out and side-stepped the whole transition quandary and now also has superpowers, none of this solves the institutional transphobia of our society. Danny (who now uses the name ‘Danny’ as a nickname for ‘Danielle’) has super strength, invulnerability, and the power of flight, as well as the appearance of a beautiful young woman.

It’s not that the terrible things that happen to Danny don’t occur in real life, but they are so squished together to get the plot rolling that these important emotional moments feel contrived. At first I wanted to give a more tone-down review but then I re-read a couple of passages and I couldn’t haha.This is so spectacularly dumb, and yet I completely believed that these two teenagers would totally do it. If Danny can’t sort through the confusion of coming out, master her powers, and stop Utopia in time, humanity faces extinction. On top of her hunt for Utopia, she juggles the new friction with her friend David who believes she’s his chance for a date, her abusive father’s mounting pressure to “fix” her body, and the reaction from Legion Pacifica when they learn the new Dreadnought is a trans girl. The long-awaited second instalment in Samantha Shannon's Sunday Times and New York Times-bestselling series Tunuva Melim is a sister of the Priory. The story opens with Danny, who is fifteen and assigned-male-at-birth, sneaking into an alley to apply toenail polish.

Until Dreadnought fell out of the sky and died right in front of her, Danny was trying to keep people from finding out she’s transgender. Just know that this is not a particularly happy trans coming out story (but not altogether depressing either! In a world where the skies are filled with superheroes and supervillains, 15-year-old Danny's dreams come true when the famous Dreadnought perishes in her arms and passes his powers on to her - powers that include super-strength, flight, and an outer body that matches the girl Danny's always been inside.

Seriously, after the intense climax, the last two pages still manage to beat that for pure emotional drama. Even when she’s not tiptoeing around her own home or rushing threw breakfast to avoid a confrontation, she’s battling back the tides of idiot, stupid, worthless he’s branded into her head. She’s interesting, characterized well (almost all the characters were, tbh) and provided both emotional dept and storyline depth.

At one point, Danny questions her previous friendship with him, wondering how she didn’t see how he was so terrible. The way Daniels works this plot in parallel to Danny’s adjustment to her changes in her plainclothes life is quite deft.On the other hand, given the sheer number of positive reviews out there, I do think that it’s important to address some of the problematic aspects of the story. This book also did such an excellent job of balancing the types of people that Danny encounters after she gets the body she wants - not to mention an incredible set of superpowers. I've finished wiping the chipped remains of last week's polish off my toes, and have a clean canvas again. But when the supervillain that killed her predecessor shows her intentions to bring destruction on humanity, Danny has to make decisions she thought she'd have more time to work out.