BENEATH FALSE STARS

In this series opener, a Normal teenager joins a postwar struggle to restore freedom and civil rights to a defeated population of genetically engineered people with diverse superpowers.

Ryleigh Stevens’ feelings for hunky Knox Archer, a fellow police academy trainee who’s Powered, undergo a radical change: She’d wrongly blamed him for causing the death of her beloved brother in a terrorist attack. Her emotional turmoil over recognizing her error is compounded when she discovers that her own government is involved in a secret effort to weaponize the crushed and sequestered Powered using a mind-control drug rather than reintegrate them into the general population. Grimm lays down the details of this inventively skewed dystopian setting and its historical background in such a strung-out way that readers may struggle at first to comprehend what’s going on. Still, the slow-burn transformation in the relationship between moody Knox, who hides more than one fantastically dangerous secret, and the rude, anxiety-prone, but stubbornly principled protagonist offers an easily graspable throughline. The Powered, who are pejoratively dubbed “simuls” (short for “simulacrum”) and must wear armbands that mute their abilities, are subjected to brutal attacks by trigger-happy police and other Normals. The episode reaches a violent, high-stakes climax before an ending that sets up for the sequel. The Powered are varied in appearance; pale-skinned Knox has blue eyes and light-brown hair. Ryleigh is cued white.

A complex, emotionally fraught kickoff driven by moral principles and developing romance.