Zeroes by Scott Westerfeld
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Don’t call them heroes.
But these six Californian teens have powers that set them apart. They can do stuff ordinary people can’t.
Take Ethan, a.k.a. Scam. He’s got a voice inside him that’ll say whatever you 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, a.k.a. 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. And 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.
Zeroes takes a different view on the superhero genre – the story is about powered teens, but it does not go into the ‘great power great responsibility’ trope. They are just regular teens who are living with their powers, however it benefits or inconveniences them. While being told from the perspectives of all 6 of the zeroes, the story starts when Scam (Ethan), who has the power to say whatever would give him what he wants, talks too much during an ongoing bank robbery, putting him in the crosshairs of the police, the bank robbers, and some drug dealers (whose money he had stole and was depositing in the bank during said bank robbery). Now, his old friends, all of whom have powers have to save him, despite tensions between all of them and their powers that come in the way of their friendship.
The background of the relationships between the main characters is not told outright, and we unravel their troubled friendship as we go along the story. Each of them has a different take on their powers. Bellwether, their Glorious Leader, can manipulate people into following him, and has a gravity that they can’t ignore. He is a bit shady, which Crash doesn’t like – she actually comes the closest to the ‘use powers for good’ trope, but that is also because her power is one that is an inconvenience to her, and a danger if she lets loose. Same for Anon, who actually has an amazing power, but it leaves him isolated and is a psychological strain for him. Comparatively, Flicker is a blind girl whose powers actually allow her to see through other’s eyes. And finally, a new player on the scene – Mob – can actually emotionally affect a crowd. When they all come together, they can band to get out of the sticky situation caused by Scam, and in the process mend their friendship.
A central theme is about how they live with their powers – how they make it work for them, how they manage their downsides, how it affects their relationships with people, and how they can essentially be the only friends to each other. Even though Flicker has a twin, she feels more at home with the zeroes for the simple reason that the latter can understand what she is. The other arc – the robbers, the drug dealers, the on-the-run-from-police – played out well, while not grabbing attention away from building up the characters. Overall, it wasn’t what I expecting but I liked it nevertheless.
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