Synopsis
Only nine months after her debut as the superhero Dreadnought, Danny Tozer is already a scarred veteran. Protecting a city the size of New Port is a team-sized job and she’s doing it alone. Between her newfound celebrity and her demanding cape duties, Dreadnought is stretched thin, and it’s only going to get worse.
When she crosses a newly discovered billionaire supervillain, Dreadnought comes under attack from all quarters. From her troubled family life to her disintegrating friendship with Calamity, there’s no lever too cruel for this villain to use against her.
She might be hard to kill, but there’s more than one way to destroy a hero. Before the war is over, Dreadnought will be forced to confront parts of herself she never wanted to acknowledge.
And behind it all, an old enemy waits in the wings, ready to unleash a plot that will scar the world forever.
Review
SOVEREIGN is the sequel to the well-received superhero novel DREADNOUGHT and the second volume of the Nemesis trilogy. The premise of the book is that Danielle Tozer is a transgender teen who has received the powers of the world’s greatest superhero. This has also transformed her into beautiful idealized form.
However, while she’s managed to liberate herself from her abusive parents, she is still struggling to get respect as a superhero. Confronted with a anti-trans sorceress named the Graywytch and a billionaire tech mogul named Garrison (who has an awesome mutant daughter who has an army of tanks).
I can’t help but think that the villains being a British TERF witch and a obnoxious Silicon Valley billionaire are direct references to two very, let’s say “controversial”, real-life figures. The thing that I am not the kind of guy who actually objects to superhero fiction being political. Frankly, in our current climate, any pro-trans media is going to be attacked as being pro-human rights is always controversial for someone.
April Daniels creates a wonderfully complex character with Danny as they struggle not so much with their gender identity, they are absolutely sure who they are, but the neverending struggle to get people to accept them just as a matter of daily interactions. This means cutting some people out of her life (her family needs to be emancipated from) while also building new relationships like with antihero Calamity, who is thankfully a lesbian as well as a superhero her age.
While not the focus of the book, which contains plenty of “ordinary” superhero action and humor, Sovereign does have a really sweet one between the lead with her partner. There’s some mild Superman and Batman energy that works well as well as the fact that both are on the outskirts of superhero society despite Danny inheriting the most respected mantle in the world. I rarely praise the romances in books but this is definitely memorable and one of the book’s strengths.
I have a few minor complaints about the book like the fact Graywitch is so one-dimensionally evil and the ending twist of “you are what you hate” kind of feels a bit on the nose. Still, it’s not like we haven’t seen oodles of reality proving that some people really are just so bigoted that it becomes their entire personality. This is also a four color comic book universe dealing with bigotry great and small so humanizing the antagonist really isn’t necessary. The fact she’s a fallen hero that became a gross caricature of herself is perhaps enough of a tragedy.
I also have to say that April Daniels is a master of relating the superhero world to the real world as well as discussing elements that would never occur to most authors, even dealing with their own relatable issues. Danny, for example, gets confronted with her own privilege despite the immense amount of struggles she deals with. A part that stuck with me is this one:
“Being genderqueer is hard. Being Iranian-American is hard. Being a superhero without a steady paying gig is also hard. Kinetiq had been swimming upstream for years to be all of those at the same time, and the credit for what should have been their big breakthrough, their first headlining victory, ended up getting handed to me by default. Why? Because I’m a pretty white girl with an easy-to-understand narrative.”
In conclusion, I absolutely loved this sequel to Dreadnought and I kind of wish the series had continued on a yearly basis. April was kind enough to let it be known that she finished the third volume the series and I really want to read it now. Still, if this had been the second and only story of Danny Tozer, I still would have enjoyed it immensely.
