Review: Trance by Kelly Meding

This is the first book in the MetaWars series by Kelly Meding.  It is also the first Kelly Meding book I have read.  I have had her Dreg City book on my TBR shelf almost since the beginning, but for some reason they keep slipping down on my list.  

This book starts off very violently.  A group of Meta children are running for there very lives through Central Park, being chased by Banes. As we find out, Metas are the names given to people who have special abilities, like shape-changing, telepathy, telekinesis  and other areas that fall under the heading Metaphysics.  The Banes are the bad guys with these powers, the good guys are called Rangers.  They all have code names based on their talents.  A war has been going on between the Rangers and Banes and we enter into what is the last stand of the war.

The story is told solely from the perspective of Teresa, or Trance as is her public handle.  Just as it looks like the children are about to be wiped out, they all fall in agony.  The story picks up 15 years later.  Something had happened that day and every Meta lost their powers.  The adult Banes were rounded up and locked on the Island of Manhattan   It was turned into a large prison and they were left to basically live out their lives under the armed guards watching from high towers and walls around Manhattan.  All of the children were put into foster care scattered around the country and left to grow up as norms. 

Teresa is now 25 years old and working 3 jobs just to pay the rent and be able to eat on a semi-regular basis.  Most of the time, she has to resort to eating left over food off of the plates that come back into the kitchen of one of the restaurants she works at.    The world is still in a state of chaos from the massive destruction of the war between the Rangers and Banes.  When her powers returned, it is with the nearly the same agony as when they left.  Oddly enough, she doesn't receive her powers, but the powers of her grandmother.  Unsure of what to do, Teresa starts hitchhiking toward Los Angles to the last Headquarters of the Rangers. 

As a huge fan of Superheroes, both comics and movies, I was sure that I was going to love this book.  And it was very good.  The untested leader who keeps second guessing herself.  The anti-hero who believes that he is doing the world a favor by getting rid of the Metas, and thus becomes the villain.  Some wise cracking secondary characters to give comic relief.  And enough twists and turns to keep everything rolling along and interesting.  I will say, that this was a very violent and bloody book.  But, they are fighting a war, and no war has ever been fought without casualties or bloodshed.  I didn't figure out who the big bad guy was until it was revealed at the end of the book.  There was little to no foreshadowing of who it could be.  With this book being told first person, it is hard to get a handle on all the characters, but I am hoping that we will find out more as the series progresses.  Overall this was a great start to the series.

I am giving this book 5 stars on Goodreads.  It is not a happy, happy, joy, joy kind of book.  However, it reminds us that there are good people out there, who may not be perfect, but are trying to make a difference in the world, that second chances are worth giving, and that even in the most helpful individuals lurk the seeds of destruction and violence.  This is worth a read, or maybe even two.


Goodreads:

Kelly Meding’s war-ravaged Los Angeles is ground zero for the ultimate Meta human showdown in this sexy, action-packed new series. Fifteen years ago, Teresa “Trance” West was a skilled telepath and a proud member of the Ranger Corps. But ever since the Rangers were inexplicably rendered powerless at the climax of the devastating Meta War, she’s bounced from one dead-end job to another. Now her powers have reappeared just as mysteriously as they vanished— only they’re completely transformed and more potent than ever. And they’re threatening to destroy her.

Trance heads to Los Angeles to track down the surviving Rangers and discover who restored her powers—and why—but a phantom enemy is determined to kill them before they can reassemble. As they dodge his deadly attacks and come to terms with their new role as heroes, Trance and the rest of the team set out to annihilate the sinister madman . . . only to discover their own powers are his greatest weapons.