Dreadnought: Britain,Germany and the Coming of the Great War

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But the transphobia just made me incredibly uncomfortable, Graywytch made me nauseated, and I'm honestly not sure I would recommend this to a trans teen, because it's reinforcing so many negative and dated ideas. Yes, plenty of people have those ideas in reality. Yes, trans teens have to deal with transphobia in reality. But surely that's all the more reason to spare them this much anti-trans sentiment in what they read for pleasure?? Until Dreadnought fell out of the sky and died right in front of her, Danny was trying to keep people from finding out she’s transgender. But before he expired, Dreadnought passed his mantle to her, and those secondhand superpowers transformed Danny’s body into what she’s always thought it should be. Now there’s no hiding that she’s a girl. Dreadnought is a debut novel. It’s not perfect. But it’s finally a superhero novel I can not only enjoy but adore. My major criticism is that it is too short, and that having read it so soon after its release I now have to wait far too long to read the sequel. I can’t wait to learn what Daniels has next in store for Danny, Sarah, the Doc, et al, both in terms of the threat of Nemesis and Danny’s newfound fame. Because this is not just a positive portrayal of a transgender lesbian superhero who saves the world, but it’s just the beginning. And I can only hope there are teens out there who read this and see that they, too, can be heroes.

I truly get the message behind the book, but it was extremely heavy-handed. Characters are either good (aka pro-LBGT) or bad (WILDLY insulting, hurls every slur and derogatory term imaginable). There's no middle ground. I don’t like boys, any boys. If I did like boys, I wouldn’t like boys who talk to me like you just did.” Dreadnought feels very much like a first novel that didn’t get a lot of attention from a professional editor. It’s got heart, but there are storytelling basics that are terribly handled, resulting in a bit of a frustrating read.In a world where the skies are filled with superheroes and supervillains, 15-year-old Danny's dreams come true when the famous Dreadnought perishes in her arms and passes his powers on to her - powers that include super-strength, flight, and an outer body that matches the girl Danny's always been inside. And, well... I loved it! Danny is going to steal the hearts of so many readers. This is such a beautiful ownvoices work and it shows from the very first chapter when we meet Danny sneakily buying nail polish. She tells us: When you're a kid, who do you look up to ? A superhero. You need to find yourself in a superhero, you need to think 'That could be me.' Kids need a transgender superhero. CONTENT WARNING: (no actual spoilers, just a list of topics) Homophobic and transphobic comments. Casual racism. Body horror. Verbal abuse.

However, I was deeply uncomfortable with this book. The plot is thin, the characters are flat, but those aren't my major concerns. It's the way that gender, sex & transition is handled. This is fantastic. Danny is a compelling character who is very easy to root for, partly because she's such an underdog, but also because her motivations for being a hero are so great. Her friendship with Calamity, another great character, is good but also serves to contrast their motivations and methods. This book does contain an incredible amount of homophobia and transphobia, and it can be very hard to get through at times. But I think the important thing is that Danny challenged each thing said against her as a transwoman, and also has support from other characters. Dreadnought is the story of Danny, a young teen who doesn’t feel like the boy everyone presumes she is. She buys nail polish and paints her toes in secret as a way trying to quiet these feelings, but is interrupted one day when Dreadnought, greatest hero of them all, is killed in front of him by the super villain Utopia. As he dies, Dreadnought passes on his powers on to Danny who finds herself suddenly transformed. Danny is finally herself, but also a superhero with some of the greatest powers that the world has ever seen. However, Danny’s life is not made magically perfect. Her family is abusive, her friends abandon her, and she’s trying to learn to deal with her powers mostly on her own with only the guidance of another teen hero named Calamity. As Utopia continues to work towards the fulfillment of her evil plans, Danny has to figure out her place in the world and whether she’s ready to step up as the new Dreadnought! The characterization of people. A lot of this was clearly catharsis against transphobes, homophobes, TERFs, toxic masculinity and so on. And I get it and support people finding that release. From a story perspective, I'd have liked it to have felt a little more fleshed out. They felt sort of like paper faces taped on punching bags. I think they deserve to be punched but I'd also like if it felt more like people than high density foam.

I don’t visualize things when I read, right? So long, florid descriptions of characters and scenes and battle sequences leave little impression on me. But snappy dialogue between Danny and Doc Impossible? Yes, please! I’ll take me some more of that. Greywytch. Oh dear lord, Greywytch. Where do I even begin? Greywytch is a member of the Legion. The very first thing she does upon meeting Danielle is to emphasise that Danielle is Daniel. Shortly after, when Danny corrects the Legion on misgendering her, Greywytch states “You were raised to be a man. Your privilege blinds you, and makes you dangerous.” When Danny says that she’s just as much of a girl as Greywytch, the senior superhero responds, “Do you even know how to put in a tampon?” Finally, my last issue with Dreadnought, and perhaps the one that bothers me the most, centers on what it says about “being a girl”. The way that Danny is denied the freedom to express herself in certain ways is heartbreaking. But the superhero aspect of this book ends up twisting this conversation into something that makes me uncomfortable. When Danny transforms at the start of the book, it is a magical (or at least hypertech) experience. Her body changes in ways that are generally unavailable in real life. This is pure wish fulfillment. On one hand, wish fulfillment is important and one of the many things that fiction can be good for! But in this case, the wish fulfillment ends up entrenching some extraordinarily problematic ideas of sex and gender for trans and cis women alike.