Specials

Specials takes the question at the heart of this series and gives it sharper teeth: if someone changes how you think, how much of what you want is actually yours?

Tally’s latest transformation puts her among the Specials, an elite group whose enhanced abilities come with a very convenient conviction that they know better than everyone else. Apparently being redesigned also comes with a complimentary superiority complex.

I enjoyed this third book overall. The idea of “improvement” becoming another form of control gives the story plenty to work with. Being faster, stronger, and more capable sounds appealing until you start wondering who decided what you should become, and whose interests those changes serve.

Tally’s perspective also makes things interesting. Having extraordinary abilities doesn’t necessarily make her judgment extraordinary, which creates a useful tension between what she believes and what the reader might question.

For me, this was a good four-star read: an entertaining continuation with an unsettling idea underneath it. A society that keeps insisting it can perfect people probably deserves considerably more scrutiny than the people it wants to fix.