ARC Review--Chimera by Kelly Meding

The mysterious and dangerous conspiracy threatening the superpowered Meta Rangers deepens in the fourth novel in the edgy, action-packed Metawars superhero series by popular urban fantasy author Kelly Meding.

Growing up with blue skin never made Renee "Flex" Duvall feel like an outcast. She learned quickly to find the joy in life and to put people at ease with her quick it and exuberant personality. Nine months after regaining her Flex powers, she's survived more emotional and physical pain than she thought possible--but despite her burned and ruined skin, she refuses to let her sunny exterior crack in front of her friends. Not while they're facing a troop of well-trained teenage criminals that may be Recombinants, a new breed of Metas that were genetically manipulated and brainwashed by a shadowy research facility.

After a ruthless battle with a trio of thieves leaves one of their friends seriously wounded, Renee and Onyx follow a clue to Manhattan Island--and to a former Bane named Chimera. But Chimera refuses to help them, even though he admits that he may hold the key to stopping these Recombinants and discovering who controls them. Chimera's emotional scars are as devastating as Renee's physical scars, and in this shared pain they find common ground. Against her better judgment, Renee builds a friendship with the man who represents everything she's been raised to distrust and despise--a man who has something very dear to lose by cooperating.

I received this e-ARC for review from the publishers via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review, I was in no way compensated for this review.

Kelly Meding's superhero series Metawars, is quite more interesting than I would've thought it to be. I somehow missed Tempest, the previous book as it was an ebook only kind of release. Must get to that one, luckily I wasn't too lost when reading Chimera.

A lot of the problems that have been effecting the group are still around, especially ones I missed from the previous book which apparently brought upon a whole new group of enemies from their master enemy The Overseer. Still not much about this bad dude or dudette. Only that he is making life for these superheroes very difficult.

This time around Renee gets her story told, Renee, aka Flex, is the blue-skinned woman who can stretch her body to great lengths. She's apart of the team tracking down some teenage thieves who are stealing great amounts of groceries. After a series of unfortunate events, she is lead to Chimera, a Bane who is in prison who might be able to help her and her team out. 

Trusting a Bane, even an ex-Bane is hard for Renee because he is the sworn enemy, out of principle. But as they work this case together, she gets to know him and she starts to like what he sees. She's still healing both physically and emotionally from all that she's endured over the past couple months (aka three books) and through it all, Chimera seems to understand her.

The case soon takes a different course as nothing is what it appeared to be before. There are more teenage Metas about who are lost. Their caregiver known as Uncle--yeah, that's not creepy at all--has forsaken them after a supposed betrayal and the teens are left lost and confused and bit angry, basically like normal teenagers going through difficult crap except they have superpowers to fuel their anger. So not good.

There are still other issues going with the group, some remains of whatever happened in Tempest and then of course there's a great deal of friction between Trance and Gage. Not sure what caused all that, probably something from Tempest, but the ending definitely leaves you shocked and hanging! Then there's also the Dahila/Noah/Ash dealio where they are all sharing the same body. Turns out that's not exactly a good thing since the Changeling cannot contain that many "people" at once. 

Really, there's a whirlwind of problems going on and still the group has the main problem of trying to find out who this Overseer is and how to stop him. And as I was saying about the ending, there's quite the cliffhanger and since The Overseer remains a problem, I can only hope that there will be at least another book! You can digitally own the entire series (so far, I hope!) in one ebook bundle. 

Overall, I enjoyed this side of Renee. There were times in Changeling--and possibly Trance, since I can't quite recall it all--that she wasn't the nicest person ever. Not quite hostile, but not always pleasant.  This book definitely lets you see another side to her. And I quite enjoyed getting inside her head.

The Metawars series is quite different from my normal UF reads, but I quite like it! It's superheroes people! How awesome are they? These are a different type of  heroes as well and getting to know them and the mystery of their powers and whatnot has been an exciting read, one that I hope will continue after this current one!


Overall Rating 4/5 stars


Chimera releases November 11, 2013