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Ulysses Dietz Member of The Paranormal Guild Review Team
Rating: 4 stars
Title: Emergence
Author: Adam J. Ridley
Publisher: Blake Allwood
Genre: sci-fi, fantasy
M/M

Publication date: 2023
Page count:

This was a fun, high-energy adventure featuring two teenagers, Kaden and Lysander, who go from enemies to friends in a mountain-top private school for teens with emerging superpowers.

There is an unmistakable echo of X-Men mythology here, and I seem to remember a sort of campy teen movie about superhero kids and sidekicks called Sky High. Adam Ridley gives this contemporary trope his own twist by imagining the notion of polarities—pairs of super-powered individuals whose powers complement and augment each other. He also creates a second duality that separates/joins the two boys. While Lysander is from a loving family, and is sent to Erudo College to make the most of what appears to be fairly limited powers; Kaden is rescued from a life of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of sex traffickers. He is sent to Erudo so that they can figure out what to do with powers that are so massive they pose a threat to humanity.

This is a full-on romance, but the sex is kept off-page. It is the emotional connection that Kaden and Lysander find that ultimately drives the plot and the fairly explosive finale. These boys represent a sort of power and polarity duo that has never been seen before.

I confess that Kaden’s over-the-top powers never quite felt believable to me. Ridley slips into hyperbole, which distracts him from the very human aspect of these boys’ budding relationship. Also, the plot felt a little rushed to me. It’s not a long book, and Ridley would have done well to take a little leisure to build up Kaden and Lysander’s friendship in the context of college life. I wouldn’t have minded an extra fifty pages that delved into various relationships a bit more. If you’re going to create a Hogwarts-like school, there could have been a lot of fun with the world-building.

The book ends with the clear sense that it is in fact a beginning. I hope this means there will be a book two.