Lauren Roberts’ Powerful did a great job of further developing Adena as a character. Since I had already read Powerless and this book takes place during the same timeframe as that book, I obviously knew that Adena was going to end up dying in this book. Even though I knew that Adena was going to die in this book, that thankfully didn’t stop me from becoming invested in Mak and Adena’s relationship throughout the book.
Makoto AKA “Mak” also proved to be a fantastic co-protagonist in the sense that he was very different from Adena in a lot of ways. They both had very difficult pasts, but Mak ultimately definitely comes across as having a much more cynical outlook on life and the world, which was definitely at least partially brought on by the fact that his parents didn’t even want to have him. I found this revelation about Mak as a character rather heartbreaking. It’s ultimately the differences between Adena and Mak as characters that led to them having great chemistry with each other, as far as I’m concerned.
Powerful definitely felt like a character piece more than anything else since it pretty much focuses Adena and Mak’s relationship while they work together on their plan to sneak into the Imperial Palace. I have to admit that it was ultimately definitely incredibly heartbreaking witnessing Adena’s death from Mak’s point of view, compared to the way it was written from Paedyn’s point of view in Powerless. That being said, pretty much the only complaint that I have about Powerful is that I felt like Roberts left the readers hanging in terms of letting them know if they would see Mak again in other books in the Powerless series since he thankfully lived. I do hope that Mak appears in other books in the Powerless series, because I thought that he, as well as Adena were both great characters.
All things considered, while I’ve oftentimes had rather mixed feelings about novellas, Roberts’ Powerful is thankfully definitely a home run for the most part, as far as I’m concerned. Roberts did a fantastic job of building upon Adena’s character development in this book. I also absolutely loved the relationship between Adena and Mak in this book. Since Mak is still alive at the end of this book, I’m really hoping that readers will see him again in more Powerless books besides just this one. (Anxiously keeping my fingers crossed) Powerful truly is an altogether awesome novella that does an excellent job of helping to expand upon the world of Lauren Roberts’ Powerless series.
That being said, my final score for Powerful is 9 out of 10.
