Book Review – Zeroes

Author: Scott Westerfeld, Margo Lanagan, Deborah Biancotti
Series: Zeroes
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Science Fiction
Release Date: 24th September 2015
Publishers: Simon & Schuster
No. Pages: 546
Source: Sent by the publisher
Buy at: BookDepository

Don’t call them heroes. But these six Californian teens have powers that set them apart

Ethan aka Scam has a voice inside him that’ll say whatever people want to hear, whether it’s true or not. Which is handy, except when it isn’t – like when the voice starts gabbing in the middle of a bank robbery. The only people who can help are the other Zeroes, who aren’t exactly best friends these days.

Enter Nate, aka Bellwether, the group’s ‘glorious leader.’ After Scam’s SOS, he pulls the scattered Zeroes back together. But when the rescue blows up in their faces, the Zeroes find themselves propelled into whirlwind encounters with ever more dangerous criminals. At the heart of the chaos they find Kelsie, who can take a crowd in the palm of her hand and tame it or let it loose as she pleases.

Filled with high-stakes action and drama, Zeroes unites three powerhouse authors for the opening installment of a thrilling new series.

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Zeroes is a difficult book to review. The concept behind this book sounded interesting and I was confident I was going to love it, but unfortunately the story fell a little flat for me.

The story follows the zeroes, a group of kids with superpowers, as they attempt to save one of their own, Ethan (aka “scam”), after his voice messes up a bank robbery. Then Ethan discovers a new zero on the block, Kelsie, and the zeroes find themselves facing even more danger as they try to aid Kelsie in rescuing her dad from a group of Russian mobsters.

I think my main issue with this book was the fact that we had so many point of views (it changed after every chapter – which weren’t very long) that I never really connected with any of the characters. But lets talk about each of these individual personalities…

First we have Ethan, his superpower is a voice that’ll say anything to get him out of trouble. I wasn’t his biggest fan. He was constantly whining about the situation he got himself into and rather than accepting responsibility he kept blaming it on his ‘voice’. Although, I do think he experienced the biggest character development out of all the zeroes, which made him slightly more likable towards the end.

Then we have Kelsie aka Mob, who I actually did like. She’s the daughter of a criminal, who is determined to save her dad. She doesn’t care about the danger she’s putting herself in trying to help him, her only goal is to save him.

Next up we have my favourite zero, Thibault aka Anonymous. His superpower means that you’ll forget him the second you see him, which actually sucks. His family have forgotten him and even the other zeroes forget he’s there. I felt sorry for him, especially when you learn more about his life.

Then there’s Riley aka Flicker, who’s blind but can see through other people’s eyes. I did like her but her character did feel really irrelevant at times.

Chizara aka Crash has the most epic power out of the group, in my opinion. She has the ability to crash technology. I did like her mainly because she didn’t always listen to glorious leader.

And lastly we have Nate aka Bellwether or glorious leader as the other zeroes often referred to him behind his back. I didn’t like him. He seemed pretty selfish and manipulative to me, but that could just be his power, which I’m still not 100% sure what it is. Everything he did and said seemed to have a hidden agenda. He was definitely my least favourite zero.

Whilst the characters were likable none of them really stood out to me, and when I took breaks from reading the characters were easily forgettable. This is mainly because there were so many different perspectives and the authors didn’t really focus on individual character development rather than plot development.

Zeroes contained plenty of action and superheroes with unique powers, so if that’s something you’re looking for you should definitely give this book a try.