Dreadnought is my catnip in concept and yet the book bugged me a little. This story about a transgender teen superhero is a coming-out story wrapped in a cape. It has fun elements but suffers from characters who are under-developed.

The story opens with Danny, who is fifteen and assigned-male-at-birth, sneaking into an alley to apply toenail polish. This small act helps Danny, who is a transgender girl but deeply closeted, feel sane. Suddenly a superhero, Dreadnought, falls from the sky, casualty of an aerial battle. Before he dies, Dreadnought gives Danny his superpowers. As a side effect, Danny’s body transforms into the body of a teen girl. Danny (who now uses the name ‘Danny’ as a nickname for ‘Danielle’) has super strength, invulnerability, and the power of flight, as well as the appearance of a beautiful young woman.

There are two stories going on – the “coming out as transgender” story and the “becoming a superhero” story. The coming out as transgender story is a parade of wretchedness. Danny is completely miserable about being transgender because she can’t tell anyone. After her body is transformed, she still has to hide the fact that this body is her preferred body. Her father is abusive and obsessed with masculinity. Her only friend, David, makes a sexual proposition after Danny’s transformation and, when Danny turns him down, David responds by saying that he hopes that Danny will get raped. There’s no mention of any LGBT-friendly groups that Danny could turn to (maybe they don’t exist there, or maybe Danny fears exposure too much to approach them). Danny, who narrates the story, tends to preface comments about the future with “If I don’t kill myself…” She feels completely isolated.

Danny is not the only superhero in town. Whitecapes are members of the Legion. Blackcapes are bad guys. Greycapes are less villainous than blackcapes but more morally flexible than whitecapes. Danny can choose what cape to wear, if any. Danny is immediately screened by the Legion, where she is bullied by Greywytch (who does not believe that transgender women are legitimately women). However, Danny also finds allies: the accepting and protective whitecape Doc Impossible and a graycape, Calamity, who is about Danny’s age. This breaks Danny’s isolation, which arguably does more to further Danny’s emotional transition than the superpowers that make Danny feel invulnerable.

Danny’s “becoming a superhero” story is pretty fun. Choosing what cape to wear, if any, is a complication. She can also choose to assume the name of Dreadnought, the hero who gave her powers. During the process of trying to decide who she wants to be, Danny enjoys having Calamity as a friend who knows about her transition and her superpowers and who accepts both.

It’s important to remember that Danny is only fifteen, so a lot of the idiotic stuff that Danny and Calamity get up to is on point for their age. They stop robberies and practice flying and have a grand time until they decide to take on Utopia, the supervillian who killed Dreadnought at the beginning of the story. This is so spectacularly dumb, and yet I completely believed that these two teenagers would totally do it.

You would think that this would be one of my all-time favorite books, but a lot of it fell flat. I think the problem comes down to a lack of nuance and complexity in the characters. Danny doesn’t have any hobbies or interests beyond being transgender until she is forced to add being a superhero to her list of interests. Her father is a bully and her mom is a doormat. Transgender youth are truly at a high risk of being abused and becoming homeless (both things happen in the book) and it’s good to see those problems being addressed, but Danny’s parents have no other characteristics than Abusive Parent and Doormat Parent.

In the same way, Graywytch is so deranged in her transphobia that she’s almost a parody figure, especially since her only characteristic is her transphobia. Graywytch’s objections to Danny consist of long, nonsensical rants. Of course there are people who engage in long, nonsensical, discriminatory rants, but I think the character, and her impact on Danny, would have been more powerful if her objections had been more clearly connected to the story and if her character had more traits than just The Transphobic One.

This book is basically Danny vs. Bigotry, and it’s wonderful to see Danny come into her own. Her closing speech is quite satisfying. However, villains – and this book is full of them – are more interesting and more challenging when they have nuance. The character who comes closest to nuance is Danny’s mom, who says that she doesn’t want Danny to be transgender because she worries about what horrible things might happen to Danny. Without nuance, the book sometimes reads less like a well-developed story and more like a Very Special Episode About How Transphobia Is Bad. Transphobia is bad, but when all the transphobia is presented in such extreme terms it’s no challenge to the reader to come to that conclusion.

There’s no romance in the book. However, Danny is a lesbian, and she and Calamity get pretty close, and there’s going to be a sequel. So who knows? By the end of the story, Danny and Calamity have become more developed characters so I’ll happily give the sequel a try.

As written, this book is what TV Tropes calls Anvilicious. Because all the characters are so one-dimensional, it feels leaden. However, TV Tropes also has a category called Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped which I think applies to this story. Transgender teens who are not supported by friends and family are at a high risk of being bullied, becoming homeless, and committing suicide. Dreadnought does a good job of bringing these issues to light. However, if it were more well-developed, it would be a better book.

In the meantime, if you need support or know someone who does, this page from GLAAD lists national online, phone, and in-person support services. And most of all, we are glad you are here, and you have value .