Swarm by Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti

Swarm by Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti
Buy Swarm by Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Teens
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Summary: This has too many hallmarks of being the middle part of a trilogy, but the superhero teens return with some fine scenes and some strong drama.
Buy? Maybe	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 464	Date: September 2016
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's UK
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 9781471124914
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The Zeroes have found a new home. If you didn't meet them all last time, they are six super-powered teens, with a guru amongst them and generally a skill that works best when concerning crowds of people. Their home is a night-club – one can imbue the simple act of handing out flyers to it with the magic of his inner voice that tells everyone what they want most to hear, the lighting gal is so in tune with technological signals she is practically part of her rig, and the DJ herself can feed off and feed back to the emotions of the revellers. But while their secretive little club – also a Faraday cage – is an ideal place for them to experiment, to enhance their powers and learn every nuance of using them and what that means, they are inviting regular humans to come along. That is, of course, until two brand new Zeroes slip the net – and prove to be quite talented, and more than a little malicious…

I had concerns about the structure of the first book, that generally went unfounded, that the story would cycle through all our heroes by rote, and make sure everything gets shared between all the characters out of evenness. Unfortunately, this starts by proving me correct in that fear. The club gets the gatecrashers, with the emphasis on the 'crash', and all our leads are affected. But they all internalise the same descriptions, the same wonders and fears about what happens, that the opening scene works out as being too off-putting. What would have been a ten-minute scene in real life, and what perhaps should have taken that long to read, is almost an hour. Off-putting? That also applies to this being not a self-contained book at all, as you will pass through several of her chapters to find proof that one of our heroines is blind, and if you can't remember everyone from last time you're on a hiding to nothing.

But I have to take this book from the point of view of it being the middle part in a trilogy, and on behalf of someone reading all three in one go – certainly in the past our lead writer, Scott Westerfeld has written series worth bingeing on. And fans will eventually turn the pages most eagerly for some very energised genre episodes, as the convoluted nature of this narrative works itself out. But things aren't perfect – for every well-wrought domestic conversation there is a weird decision, such as making Ethan (the lad with the voice of truth) the son of a woman investigating corrupt cops – corrupt cops such as he can't keep himself from getting involved with. The book was woolly and overlong enough without such needless, albeit tiny, subplots.

Still, that can be called a hangover from the first book, where we had a mish-mash of gangs and criminality for the teens to conquer. Now we've got something else – I thought we would get a similar pattern, with our old Zeroes against the new ones and perhaps someone else, but it's what and who the new Zeroes presage that is of most interest. And that, as any middle trilogy book needs to do, ups the ante, strengthening the lore of the series, and making everything more heightened. Which means that even though I would have hit this book with a red pen too many times, I would still be interested to see where the third takes us. Certainly by the end, our trio of authors have shown mastery enough of enough good scenes to compel further reading.

I must thank the publishers for my review copy.

Boy X by Dan Smith offers fine drama for a similar age-group. (We're loath to pin the 'confident readers tag' to Swarm however – instances of language are not the only things to make it a 'teen' read.)

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You can read more book reviews or buy Swarm by Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Swarm by Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan and Deborah Biancotti at Amazon.com.

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