Blackout (Blackout, #1)

by Robison Wells

[Angie]

I was very excited to read Blackout because of a widespread virus and terrorist teenagers with superpowers! That sounds like a dangerous combination, and it was, except that I have no clue why any of this is happening. Alec and Laura are part of a terrorist group and of course have some amazing abilities. They're traveling the midwest and blowing stuff up! Meanwhile, Aubrey has an ability she doesn't understand, and Jack tries to help her get away when the government crashes the school dance to take everyone away. The world is in chaos, but why?!

Blackout has a lot of great ideas here. I love tales of viruses sweeping through countries or the world. This virus has apparently gone global, but we don't learn much about it. There's a very clear explanation of why it only effects teenagers and young adults, and there's a brief mention of how it possibly got out. But beyond that, we're in the dark. Alec and Laura grew up with this virus and do mention how they got it, but how did it come about in the first place?

I also had to wonder why the terrorist group is doing what they're doing. Alec and Laura are seriously just blowing up bridges and dams. To what purpose? Terrorist must have some kind of goal and motivation no matter how outlandish, but somehow even with two of the four POVs being someone who is savvy to the goings-on of this group, the reasons are never revealed. This made it really hard for me to stay in the story and to fully care about what was going on. The lack of explanation made everything seem so random and without focus. And the ending is a cliffhanger, but I have no clue what it means! There was no context to tell me why that would even be happening or what it has to do with anything, so I was left underwhelmed.

Blackout had a lot of potential, but the lack of world-building really hurt it. I need to know why things are happening! If this had been told only from Aubrey and Jack's POV, I could understand this, it would be something that they need to figure out in order to save the world. Well, Alec and Laura know, and they're not unreliable narrators, so there's no reason why we wouldn't learn some of their background. I liked having the bad guys be narrators, but sadly, they didn't add much except unanswered questions.

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