Dangerous, a new novel by Shannon Hale, is a book entirely different from her Books of Bayern series or her Princess Academy series, which are both fantasy. Dangerous reveals an entirely new side of Shannon Hale because it's basically a superhero story, with science and high-action, superpowers, aliens, and then the bad guys on earth trying to use our superheros for their own gain.
Maisie Danger Brown is an unusual girl to start with, even before anything interesting happens to her. She was born with only one hand to a Spanish-speaking Mom and a biologist Dad. Besides her missing hand and habit of speaking Spanish, there are two other things that make Maisie different from your average person. She's homeschooled and she's obsessed with science and space. So when she gets a chance to attend a space camp for teens, she jumps on it.
But Danger is her middle name and somehow can't help attracting it. First, she and four other teens at the space camp are infected by alien technology which gives them superpowers. Maisie can make anything, anything she wants, anything she can think of. It's like a dream come true, but none of the infected kids can be sure what's going to happen next. They know for certain that the infection didn't just 'happen' to them. There was a purpose, and they can all feel it. But their powers are getting out of control, and after the death of one of the new superheroes, the group begins to break up.
Can Maisie save the team of superheroes from breaking up and wrecking havoc across Earth? Can she figure out what the Purpose that's nagging at them all is? And can she trust her heart now that she's fallen in love?
Dangerous was a good book. I don't usually go in for science-fiction type stuff, but this book wasn't quite that. It reminded me a lot of The Avengers, a superhero movie. A team of unlikely people with varied superpowers come together to save the world - maybe from aliens, maybe from something else. It's an action-packed story, but Shannon Hale made it appealing with a singular heroine in the form of Maisie Danger Brown. Maisie has guts, she's smart, and through it all, she tries to do what is right - even when that's not possible to do.
There were a few things that keep me from being totally happy with Dangerous, though. I'm totally okay with romance in book, including teen romance that involves kissing, as long as the romance doesn't become the point of the entire story. Maisie's romance wasn't the focus of the book, but she and Wilder kissed way more than I was comfortable with. Despite that, I would have rated Dangerous 4.5 stars except for this one scene when she and Wilder almost went further in their romance than 'just kissing.' And after that, regardless of how good the rest of the story was, I dropped my rating to 3.5 stars.
Taking an entire star from a rating is a pretty big step, so I want to provide my reasons for that. First, coming from Shannon Hale, just the sheer amount of kissing in Dangerous was kind of a surprise. If you've ever read her Books of Bayern series, you'll know that the kisses are few and far between - and I'm not saying that's a bad thing or a good thing. It's just the way those stories went. And the amount of kissing in Dangerous was just how this particular story goes. I can understand that - doesn't mean I approve of it 100%, but I can tolerate it, and it doesn't get in the way of my enjoying the story. But then there was the almost scene, and that really bothered me.
Without getting really deep into this, I basically felt a little betrayed by Shannon Hale for doing that. One, because it was totally unexpected from her. But every writer has a right to write whatever he or she feels like, so that's not her fault. It's up to me to either put up with it and keep reading, or decide it's too much and quite. I didn't quit, but I was more than a little disappointed that Shannon Hale decided to go there. Two, I'm not a fan of that kind of content. I can put up with it, but I don't like it and it really bothers me. The third reason I was so bothered by the almost scene goes back to the fact that Maisie is homeschooled.
Now, maybe I'm overreacting and being really harsh in my judging here, but everyone should be entitled to their own opinion, and I'm just writing mine. I felt that early on, when Maisie first meets Wilder, she was being represented as a niave homeschooler who has no idea what people are like. Also, when she and Wilder are kissing within three weeks of having met each other, I thought it was going too fast and made Maisie seem gullible. Later, during the almost scene, the way things lined up and the way Maisie thought again felt like they were casting a bad light on homeschoolers. Please note that I don't judge Shannon Hale for writing a homeschooler. Nothing I noticed offended me really - I just smiled and shook my head. It's a fictional book about fictional events and people. I can bear if the book isn't flawlessly realistic.
I'm also 100% certain that Shannon Hale didn't mean for anyone to have this kind of reaction to Dangerous. She talked to several homeschoolers during the writing of the book, and had people give her feedback on how she represented them. And on the whole, she did a great job. Maisie seemed just like any normal person - and that's really the problem. Homeschoolers are (except in extreme cases) just normal people. The homeschooling didn't really add anything to the story. It's a trivial detail, and the book would probably have been better if it weren't there. When you make your character distinct in some way as big as making her one-handed or homeschooled, readers expect that detail to be vital to the story (at least I do), and homeschooling wasn't. And by having that detail there, Dangerous gets judged a certain way. Maybe all this is hogwash, but its what I thought. If you read Dangerous and have an opinion about how homeschooling and almost were written, comment below - I'd love to hear from you.
In the end, the almost in Dangerous bugs me, but besides that I really enjoyed it. It had great characters, great action, and a great plot. I discovered I have a thing for superpowers, and these were really cool! Plus the aliens were obviously not a rip-off of something that had been written before. In a genre full of science-fiction-alien-invasion stories, I think Shannon Hale has carved out her own niche with superheros and a brand of bad guys that no one has thought of before. If you're really picky about the content you're getting in a book, the almost might be too much for you, but the rest of the book is very good. I'm not a big sci-fi reader, but I liked it. The romance was stronger than suited me, but the plot itself was captivating and gives a good example of how talented Shannon Hale is. She wrote a book outside of her normal fantasy genre, and came up with something very distinct and interesting.
As a final note to a really long review - I apologize, I had no idea I'd go on this long! - I want to share this statement I found on Shannon Hale's website:
Dangerous is a "novel that asks, How far would you go to save the ones you love? And how far would you go to save everyone else?" A big question for just one book to deal with, but Shannon Hale does a good job of it.Link to author website: http://www.squeetus.com/stage/main.html
Also, there's a post on Hale's blog where she talks about Dangerous and the main character, Maisie Danger Brown, which you can find HERE if you're interested in hearing more.
Thanks for the review.
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