Genre: Sci-Fi, Superhero, Romance
LGBTQ+ Category: Lesbian, Trans
Reviewer: Rari
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About The Book
Megan Harwood never wanted to be a hero. She just wanted to indulge the two great loves of her life, woodworking and music, and for the last few years, she’s done just that running a small guitar making business in Sun City Florida with her dad’s help. But when Megan refuses to sell her shop, she ends up on the hit list of the Unitarium, an organized crime syndicate made of up supervillains and their minions.
After being grabbed off the street and used as a test subject in one of their experiments, Megan begins hearing a woman’s voice in her head. A voice that turns out to be Eurion, the beautiful woman Megan has had a crush on for the past year. A woman who also claims to be an ancient red dragon. With Eurion’s guidance, Megan is able to escape from the Unitarium’s clutches, and in the process, she discovers that they have infiltrated the Department of Metahuman Affairs.
Before Megan can decide who to trust, she finds herself framed for Eurion’s murder, putting her squarely in the crosshairs of some of the world’s most powerful Superheroes. Frightened, alone, with only the voice in her head for guidance, Megan has to find a way to rescue Eurion and clear her name, before Eurion’s friends hunt her down.
The Review
I feel like I should start my review with a disclaimer: This series to me is Personal.
My superhero phase happened at the same time as my starting-to-become-a-functional-adult phase and my discovering-queerness-and-all-the-possibilities-that-community-offers phase. It also was at the height of the MCU as a cultural phenomenon, so yeah, long story short, I have read A LOT of queer Avengers fanfic. More than that, queer Avengers fanfic was my first real exposure to the concept of queer community. Then of course the MCU made it perfectly clear that they do NOT want people like me – or the versions of their heroes I came to know through fanfiction – in their world, and I moved on.
Then I chanced upon the Hearts of Heroes series by Molly J. Bragg.
Structurally, this series resembles most the early phases of the MCU. Every book centers around a new hero, and is a closed story that could be read as a stand-alone. However, all the books take part in the same universe, so heroes we know from previous books always make an appearance, but stay in a minor role compared to the titular heroes. As such, they have the same effect of an ever-growing and expanding universe as the MCU did, back when it was still fun.
And, as the title of the series suggests, these are all romances. As I said, I read A LOT of fanfictions, so superhero romances are right up my alley. The trick is finding the right balance between the superhero stuff and the romance stuff, something that I feel like both Bragg and I have struggled with. Scatter is more romance than superhero, and it works, Transistor misses the balance by putting the superhero stakes too high and then telling the story as if it was mostly a romance, but Aether and Rhapsody both manage the balance perfectly. Maybe it’s just me knowing what to expect, but I also feel like Bragg’s writing has gotten better in that aspect. The stakes are serious, but also personal rather than world-destruction level, and the romances are really sweet and easy to root for. Also, because of the structure of the series, we get to see relationships after “their story” is over, just being happily married. It’s also all very queer. And it can do what those fanfictions never could, which is incorporating that queerness to the very core of the heroes.
Rhapsody aka Megan is the second (titular) trans woman in the series, and it serves to the credit of these books that her experience is VERY different from that of Naomi. Megan comes from a loving and supporting family, and has been out since her teenage years. She runs a guitar shop, and is perfectly happy, apart from her loneliness. Megan’s stable lifestyle is rudely interrupted, when she gets kidnapped by gangsters aiming to buy her shop, and, when that fails, to make an example out of Megan. They try to kill her by putting her through an experiment that has killed all previous test subjects, but instead of dying, Megan bonds with a mysterious alien entity and gains superpowers, as well as a mental link to one of the other victims, the dragon Eurion. Megan escapes, only to find that she has been framed for Eurion’s murder, and has all the Police and every single superhero after her.
From the rest of the series, this book stands out mostly for its critical attitude to the legal system, including the role that superheroes play in it. While Naomi ended up joining the superheroes, Megan refuses to the very end, only wanting to return to a normal life. Also, none of the other heroes were declared supervillains by the system, so it’s only now that we get to see what both the Police and the superheroes do to those they consider evil. So Rhapsody does a lot to question the system established in both these books and the larger superhero genre, and it’s really nice.
I also want to say that I loved to get some more insight into the character of Eurion, and the way her loneliness mirrors Megan’s.
I really liked this book. My favorite so far is still Aether, but Rhapsody comes a close second. I really hope that Bragg keeps writing more, and that her work becomes more widely known among superhero fans. It really would deserve all the recognition in the world.
The Reviewer
Rari is an author and editor writing under the name of Niranjan K. She is an avid reader of all things fantasy, and loves to discourse at length about her favourite books as well as shows. This blog is the space where she will be sharing her views and insights of the books, shows and movies that she likes.