Review of Supernova by Marissa Meyer

After reading Renegades and Archenemies back to back last year, I slept on borrowing the final book in Marissa Meyer’s superhero trilogy. But no more! Supernova is an explosive conclusion to this story, and while it is far from surprising, it is definitely satisfying.

Spoilers for the first two books but not this one.

The Renegades are recovering from an attack on their headquarters. Max Everhart, the young adopted son of Captain Chromium and the Dread Warden, is in critical care. Nightmare has absconded with the helmet of Ace Anarchy. And Nova, secretly Nightmare, is sure her cover will be blown any moment and her team will discover her duplicity. But Adrian Everhart is too focused on trying to figure out how to tell his dads that he’s the Sentinel to realize his girlfriend is also his worst enemy.

Look, this book is nearly six hundred pages, yet I read it in basically a few hours. It’s the equivalent of a beach read for me, a popcorn book, where I can sit back and not think too hard. The superpowers are silly, the situations over-the-top and melodramatic. Nevertheless, Meyer stage-manages everything perfectly. As far as being a sequel and a finale, Supernova checks off all the boxes, right up until an explosive climax. I could easily see this trilogy being developed as a limited series or something; even as someone who seldom visualizes when she reads, I could feel the cinematic quality to Meyer’s description.

Nova and, to some extent, Adrian’s characterization also remains deep and real. As I reflected in my review of Archenemies, the beating heart of this series is the pathos for Nova’s position: she is posing as a hero but actually a villain, betraying a guy she is steadily falling for, even as she wonders if her villainous found family is in the right. You want the Renegades to win because they are the “good guys”—except you kind of want the Anarchists to win because the Renegades are also gigantic dicks. Except the Anarchists winning probably means a lot of people dying, so … wait, who should win again?

This complexity doesn’t extend beyond the core cast, alas. Captain Chromium, Ace Anarchy—they are predictable stereotypes. Meyer tries to dig a bit deeper into the pressures that have moulded Hugh Everhart into the kind of leader he is, portraying him in a semisympathetic light. Yet he never quite rises above a baseline level of doltishness that makes him feel more like a stock character.

If this comic book–like quality in a novel appeals to you, then Supernova (and the preceding two books) will work for you. Certainly despite these critiques I have very much enjoyed these books, hence my decision to devour this one within a day, powering right through those last hundred pages like nobody’s business. Meyer also sets things up in the epilogue for a potential sequel story, so who knows?

Supernova is a fitting end to a superhero series that doesn’t ask too much of the reader and, in return, hopes you don’t ask too much of it. While seldom all that deep or original, it nevertheless showcases Meyer’s talents at crafting fun and memorable characters and telling a (melo)dramatic story.