RUNNING FROM DESTINY

A pair of unusual teenagers finds themselves on the run from a shadowy government agency.

In the first installment of Rothman’s New Beginnings series, 17-year-old Anya Fitzsimmons and high school senior Jason Rogers are facing the same utterly remarkable problem: They’re not like other teenagers; they have superpowers. Jason’s powers, which include teleportation, are only just developing. Anya is far more familiar with her talents thanks to the fact that her father, a colonel in Special Forces, runs the government’s clandestine “Project Gandalf,” charged with “finding people with hidden powers and helping them cope with their abilities.” Anya’s father’s friend Maj. Marc Chambers has often joked about her resemblance to the classic image of a vampire—a joke Anya doesn’t appreciate—and when Chambers tries to assault her, she lashes out with her powers and nearly kills him. So she’s disposed to flee with Jason, who’s been kidnapped by the Project, when he offers to use his newly developed teleportation powers to help them both escape. Suddenly, the two teens find themselves fugitives targeted by the operatives of Project Gandalf. And they’re also caught up in a long-hidden war between the project and an opposing group called the Tenebrarum, an ancient society one character calls “a collection of tainted souls.” Rothman gathers a very well-realized cast of secondary characters around these two, from other agency operatives to other superpowered teens. Rothman’s imaginative canvas is pleasingly broad, although the core story is very close to typical YA fiction in its DNA (“Jason’s heart beat even faster—but this time it wasn’t because he was panicked about the powers coursing through his body. It was because Anya was really pretty”). The result is refreshingly complex—a very promising start to a new series.

A lively, kinetic SF tale for X-Men fans.