Transgender Tuesday: Reviewing "Sovereign" by April Daniels

I was hooked by Dreadnought, and after reading some overwhelmingly positive reviews, I read the sequel, Sovereign.  BLUF:  It's really good, though there are some triggerific parts and definitely a few low points; but as a whole, Sovereign takes what was great about Dreadnought (comic-book-esque storytelling style, compelling heroics, and villains I really like to argue with in my head) and kicks it all up a notch.

Even the cover is better!  (Image swiped from Goodreads.)

I'm not arguing against a specific position like last time, making this review considerably shorter.  However, while I'll try to avoid them as much as possible, BEWARE SPOILERS!
Sovereign picks up after a time skip:  Danny has moved in with Doctor Impossible and is embroiled in a legal battle with her parents, but is still kicking ass and bearing the mantle.  One of the very first scenes is at a superhero convention in Antarctica, which makes for some great literary scenery porn, followed by an emergency flight back home through low-Earth orbit.  This has already brought up three things that are great about this book:

• Location, Location, Location:  While Dreadnought takes place entirely within New Port City, Sovereign features a number of exciting locations.  In addition to the superhero convention in Antarctica, the main villain's base is a floating city-state far out to sea, the Big Solo Battle takes place in space, and the Anticlimactic Final Battle is on another world that Danny reaches by traveling through a magic portal.  Daniels is great at describing the salient details of each environment in a way that comes off as concise, realistic, and beautiful.  I love how the descriptions still feel like reading a comic book:  enough detail to make it believable, without detracting from the pacing or action with Tolkien-esque levels of Too Much Detail.
• The Joy of Superpowers:  Reading Danny get the hang of her powers was one of my favorite things about Dreadnought, and Sovereign continues in this vein by showing how she has come to master them.  Because of this progression, it still feels fresh and joyful to read the little jaunts into power-wank (technical term), because Danny has picked up new skills without getting new powers.  For example, the aforementioned low-Earth globetrotting is done because Earth is huge but its atmosphere is relatively thin, and air resistance is a thing.  This means that, for a long enough journey, it's actually more efficient to shoot straight up into orbit where there's no atmosphere, and travel at several times the speed of sound before coming back down over her destination.  Because the Earth is rotating, this is complicated, but Doc Impossible makes it doable with some augmented reality gear installed in Danny's suit.
• Realistic Portrayal of Problems:  In the climax of Dreadnought, people in the main superhero team died, leaving the survivors with physical, psychological, and neurological trauma.  They bear these wounds in Sovereign:  the band doesn't get back together.  Doc Impossible even develops a drinking problem, despite being an android, because she's so shook up and hasn't processed things enough to alter her programming; this has consequences on her ability to support Danny at a few different points before she sees the bigger picture and forces herself to get her shit together.  While some of the portrayals of trauma are brief, they don't come off as super-stereotyped; they're treated seriously and people react believably.

On to the main story!  Sovereign is about Danny's fight against a fascist libertarian billionaire (we'll call him "Dickhole"), and all the SJW-wank that entails.  Being an avid SJW myself, I am here for this.  Dickhole already has his proof-of-concept sea base to show that it can work, and he plans to build a "pure meritocracy" wherein the most deserving are given superpowers, because that's a thing he can do.  He's got the money and the vision, but doesn't feel secure in his social cachet, and so he tries to recruit Dreadnought to bring some superhero cred to his nonsense.  However, Danny sees through his bullshit as he explains himself (and like all good fascists, he can't help but give up the game because he doesn't realize why the bad parts are bad), and declines.  He then shuts down her powers, because that's a thing he can do, and beats her senseless.

What follows is basically a torture montage, and it's the most common source of negativity about the book.  I can say that it didn't trigger me, but I'm dead inside, so your mileage may vary.  In all honesty, it struck me as pretty tame; while Danny's beating at the hands of Dickhole is graphic, it's also brief, and the ensuing torture is more like Westley on that life-draining wheel in The Princess Bride than like watching Tom Berenger get his finger horribly mangled in Sniper.  There's also a point to it:  plot-wise, the point of the torture is to figure out how to transfer one person's powers to another (a missing piece in Dickhole's plan); meta-wise, the point is to show the absurd lengths to which the villains will go against someone who has crossed them (an important point in establishing their villainy).

Dickhole does eventually get powers to match Dreadnought's, and then some; while he has the advantage for a while and presses it hard, she's able to adapt and overcome, in a very satisfying way that I found just as surprising as it was satisfying.  There are a couple of side plots, too:  Danny's battle for acceptance with her parents, and Graywytch's crusade against her for having the audacity to be a trans superhero, both of which tie together in a supremely frustrating way.  As a trans woman, I identify hard with Danny's struggles, and the double-binds she finds herself in.  In all honesty, these bits were actually harder for me to read than the torture, because the hate she faces is both more realistic and more personal.  While things do get resolved, it's only at great cost (holy shit, what a cost!), and not even Dreadnought's hard-won victory is able to make the world a better place.

Because almost all of the major players are already established characters from the first book, Daniels is able to spend more time on major themes and character development, and she spends that time very wisely.  In all honesty, while the book does have flaws (nothing is perfect), I only have one complaint and it's not even about the book:  having gotten a taste of some awesome representation, I want more, to the point that I haven't been able to start reading anything else.  I mean, I had a list!  But Sovereign is awesome:  I came away loving every new thing I learned and cheering for everyone who grew, and I can't wait to see how she wraps it all up in book three!