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A review by lezreadalot
Transistor by Molly J. Bragg
3.0
“Being brave doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid. Being brave means you’re afraid and you do it anyway.”
A really good sci-fi/superhero romance, but it definitely had its issues, and is sadly overall less successful then the first book in the series. I love everything that the book is going for, but there's a lot to be desired about the pace and execution. Naomi takes part in a new clinical trial for her gender confirmation surgery, and it leaves her with all the results she wanted, plus a few she didn't expect. When Anika, her next door neighbour whom she's had a crush on for three years, finds herself in trouble, Naomi swoops in to help, and soon they're on the run and on a dangerous adventure.
This includes a lot of bulletproof themes and tropes for me (self discovery and angels and AI, three things I particularly love) but the way the story was formulated just wasn't... good? Like, 1 pound of plot in a 5 pound bag, and a gallon of character interaction in development in a single cup. Way out of proportion. In books, characters are eternally and always way more important to me than plot, but even I got frustrated with how little was actually happening in the plot? They would go some place, hide out, get attacked, go some place else, rinse and repeat. Anika narrated her backstory a bajillion times. We got cameos from characters I loved in the first book, but nothing super substantial? I really liked all the angels, their very distinct personalities and relationships, and the mythos in the world (especially the Book and Enoch, and Anika being and Ethiopian Jew), but it still felt like we didn't DO anything with it. It seems pretty obvious to me what action the characters would/should take, but they only decided upon it around 90% in, and until then, it really felt like we were in perpetual limbo. A lot of the science stuff... like, it was SO COOL, but it also felt so disjointed? Like, the characters would be faced with a problem, and suddenly Cool New Thing Ex Machina would be thrown out by another character to save the day, with no little rhyme of reason. So much was happening to Naomi and around Naomi, and it's pretty unreal, how well she adjusted.
Lots of character stuff happened within that time period, but it was almost... too much? Everything that happened between Naomi and Anika and Chance, the directions that things go and the conclusion they come to: all wonderful. I loved it. But it was SO much to happen in a little 330 page book. The arc that they go on, that's something that needs time and care and development and at least two books imo. The fact that it all happens in a week in, once again, an average length book? It felt to weird. I really liked the romance and the mutual pining that Anika and Naomi have going on, and all the other spoilery revelations are cute (came a liiiiittle bit out of left field to me, but I like what I like in fiction, so it was still cute to me). But it still felt like it just HAPPENED, at the snap of a finger, because the author wanted it to happen. I felt no real and organic development. And that was such a bummer, because the romance was the best part of the first book. In addition, the writing didn't appeal to me as much here. Lots of fun bits, fandom references, tongue in cheek quips, snarkiness... but some of it went over the top, and became a little cringey. A lot of cute stuff, but some of it verged on cutesy which is a very different vibe. Idk. I really liked the characters, but I wanted more out of this story.
Listened to the audiobook as read by Jennifer Pickens, which I loved. A lot of different voices and accents, and I enjoyed them all. The book started off so so well, and I really expected to enjoy it more than this? But sadly, in spite of the great characters, I'm a little underwhelmed.
Content warnings: