I know this is a month late, I just figured, with the long wait between volumes, maybe I’d postpone reading it, so the wait for the next book isn’t so long. And I thought maybe I’d take my time once I started reading it too.
I finished it two hours after Amazon dropped it off. I regret nothing!
Keep reading for a review of Adam Warren’s Empowered volume 11.
Some spoilers below for volume 11, as few as I can get away with. But MAJOR spoilers for volume 10. I figure it’s been two years, spoilers are probably allowed, but just to be safe, if you haven’t read 10 I’m giving away a lot.
When we last saw Emp and her boyfriend ThugBoy, they were on a rooftop and he’d just revealed that he’s been lying to her for months now, secretly working as an evil minion so he can rip off bad guys, and keep an eye on her while she worked so he could keep her safe.
I get that he’s worried about her, he needs some kind of employment, she can’t make all the decisions in the relationship, and the whole “unwritten code” that keeps bad guys from raping and killing superwomen is a pretty flimsy thing to count on, but him basically saying “I’ve never lied to you I’ve only been evasive about this one thing” was infuriating (THAT’S WHAT LYING IS, THUGBOY) as is the fact that he single handedly took away every win she’s had for the last year, including her having the #1 rating on the Supratip hotline because he’s been sneaking in there using her password and adding his tips to hers. (I’d like to think she would’ve had the #1 rating even without his tips, but I bet she doesn’t believe that.)
I was getting myself ready for the inevitable breakup (Emp looked like she was steeling herself to do it) when ThugBoy suddenly beat the crap out of her and threw her off the building.
It was the most shocking moment of the last several volumes, and I was only slightly relieved to find out it was MindF*ck’s psychopathic brother Neurospear mind-controlling ThugBoy. It was still brutal.
This volume picks up seconds later (after a small, beautiful flashback.) (Seriously, the shading in that section is amazing.)
Neurospear, it turns out, blames Emp for MindF*ck’s death. (Yes, it’s hilarious to keep saying her name; Adam Warren in an interview admitted that he gets a kick out of a major character with a name that has to be constantly censored.) He’s decided to put her through a trial by fire, and is telepathically forcing anyone in the area to attack, up to and including ThugBoy and Emp’s best friend Ninjette, of course.
What follows is one long, epic, terrifying battle. We get several pages of flashbacks to give us a chance to catch our breath every once in a while, but the majority of it is Emp fighting for her life.
Neurospear, though technically an adult, has a child’s appreciation for a “fair” battle, and usually just sends two super-powered people at a time to attack her. (MindF*ck also mentions the reason why he can’t send a crowd of people at once, and it seems very logical to me.) But even with two or three people at a time, he doesn’t pause in between fights, and just sends the next two, and the next, and the next, over and over, and it’s so exhausting I had to take a break halfway through the book.
I can’t imagine what it must have been like to draw something like this. There’s so many distinct characters, and half the time they’re fighting with complicated skylines or corridors in the background; looking at it you know exactly why it’s been two years since the last book. This volume is a frigging marathon of work. And as horrific as it is sometimes, it’s also beautiful in places. Adam’s work lends itself to quiet flashbacks and chaotic battle scenes equally well.
In between all the fights and explosions is a lot of world building. I thought I had a handle on the big picture in these books, but it’s a bit bigger than I realized.
In Volume 10, one of the Glassbreak guards had the throwaway line “Most Tier-One superheroes believe we’re already in the midst of a slow-motion apocalypse.” Don’t ever be fooled into thinking any comment in Adam’s books is really a throwaway line.
That concept has been expanded on. A lot. The super heroes in these books are dealing with more than just mega villains, and even Neurospear is just a piece in a larger puzzle. (A horrific, psychopathic, potentially world-ending piece, sure.)
In addition to all that huge world-building, we get some tidbits of information about our favorite characters. In the opening flashback Empowered comes clean with ThugBoy and Ninjette about one of her biggest hangups, we see flashbacks of living and dead super heroes, we find out how far MindF*ck was willing to go to protect someone, we get a huge piece of information about Emp’s supersuit, and we get a tiny piece of information about ThugBoy that literally made my jaw drop. (Seriously, such a small bit of info if you blink you might miss it. I didn’t miss it.) And the seeds for a lot of those reveals were planted a very long time ago.
A lot of this book is about doubts, either Emp’s doubts about herself or the reason why Neurospear became what he is.
We know from earlier volumes that MindF*ck’s brother, who’s name used to be Brainbow (….heh, that’s an adorably awful name) didn’t consider himself very strong, so he telepathically edited his own personality to get rid of all his hesitation and doubt. Not surprisingly, hacking away at your own brain is “tricky,” and he managed to also edit out empathy, introspection, compassion, and anything like a moral compass.
Having some doubts doesn’t necessarily make you weak, it means you’re open to the idea of being wrong sometimes. And any person who says they’ve never had any doubts about anything is either lying or a monster. And Neurospear isn’t lying.
The Empowered books don’t really have a “message”, but if the advice of volume 10 was about looking pretty damn hard at your real motives (I’m looking at you, ThugBoy I HAVEN’T FORGIVEN YOU YET) then maybe the advice of volume 11 is that being a strong person and having doubts is a lot like being a brave person and having fears; one doesn’t cancel out the other.
Or maybe it’s just “if you’re going to telepathically rewire your own brain maybe don’t change into a mass murdering psychopath.” That’s helpful advice too.
There’s so many other parts I can’t talk about because I wouldn’t want to give them away. It’s not a “happy” book, by any means. There’s going to be repercussions for years. But I thought it was immensely satisfying.
That’s it for the review, the rest is just some personal thoughts that occurred to me after reading it. (Some slightly bigger spoilers below.)
Early this year I realized I was in the minority, among my family and friends, in that the first season of Love, Death and Robots made me a little uncomfortable. Sure, there were lots of people online complaining about “male gaze” and “fetishizing violence against women,” but people I like and respect who are close to me thought it was fine.
So now I’m in a very weird position of having to explain (to MYSELF) why I like Empowered so much.
The LD&R episode that bothered me the most was “The Witness,” with a screaming, mostly naked, terrified woman running for her life. (For the record, the animation was gorgeous.)
And then in Empowered 11 we have essentially the same thing happening to Emp, right down to someone stripping off her suit so she’s cowering, naked, and powerless. How is that not bothering me?
I guess partly because it did bother me, because it was supposed to.
This isn’t an anonymous woman I have no connection to that I only see for ten minutes, this is a well-developed character with flaws and strengths that I’ve already had ten books (plus stand-alone stories) to get to know, and if I didn’t like her I certainly wouldn’t have read an eleventh volume. Showing her in that helpless moment broke my heart in a way that’s hard to do in ten minutes.
Maybe it’s intent? Or context? That horrible scene was a pivotal moment in a long arc, and because of it we now know something hugely important about Emp and her connection to the suit, and it wouldn’t have happened unless she was at her most helpless, and it’s hard to be more helpless than completely naked with someone trying to kill you.
And maybe it’s because of what happened right after that scene, because I’ve been waiting for that for literally years. AND IT WAS SO WORTH IT. (It’d explain why I enjoyed “Sonnie’s Edge” more than “The Witness”: epic payoff.)
Or maybe I’m a hypocrite. It’s certainly made me examine my stance on LD&R for damn sure. Either I need to be a little harder on Empowered, or I need to go easier on LD&R. (The latter is waaaay more likely.)
