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Meta #1-3
Meta / The Second Wave / Rise of the Circle
The first three books in the smash hit Meta series, available together for the first time. This discounted set included the best-selling Meta, The Second Wave, and Rise of The Circle.
Meta (Book 1)
It’s been ten years since Connor Connolly lost his parents in ‘The Battle’; a fight between The Governor and Jones, two of the world’s strongest metas. Before ‘The Battle’ the world had been full of metas, super-powered humans whose amazing abilities came from mysterious wristbands. Since that day one has never been seen again.
Now 16 years old, Connor lives in Bay View City with his older brother Derrick, a meta-obsessed blogger, where he’s just trying to keep his head down long enough to survive high school. All of that changes the night he attempts to save a girl's life and wakes up to find the first new pair of metabands anyone has seen wrapped around his wrists.
Connor soon finds an unlikely ally in Midnight, a masked vigilante who helps him learn how to harness his new abilities, while also trying to balance his summer job at the lake. As a meta, Connor becomes known as Omni, potentially the most powerful meta the world has ever seen, but it isn’t long before he finds out he's no longer alone...
"A hard genre to pull off successfully, but Reynolds succeeds in giving the two-dimensional heroes of comics a more three-dimensional existence in prose." - The Guardian
"Meta was all the fun I expected. I will certainly be picking up the second in this series." - Boing Boing
The Second Wave (Book 2)
Summer’s over and Connor Connolly is headed back to school to start junior year. But with metabands falling from the sky, the world has changed overnight, and now there are thousands of new metahumans. Just like regular humans, not all metahumans are using their new powers for good. Now, Connor’s not only dealing with the pressures of being a super-human and training with his mentor, Midnight, he also has to balance relationships with the people he cares for most. People who find themselves on different sides of the fence when it comes to their feelings about the new metahumans and the impact they’re having on everyone else’s lives. As the world struggles to adjust to the events of the past few months, Connor’s alter ego, Omni, works with The Agency to apprehend law breaking metahumans, and detain them at the Silver Island Meta Detention Facility. When he’s recruited for a job assisting the government agency with disarming one of the most powerful and secretive metas in Bay View City, he never expects the devastation of that mission or the affect it will have on both humans and metas. Is Connor capable of becoming the hero he wants to be?
Rise of The Circle (Book 3)
As metahumans emerge throughout the world, some greet them as saviors while others see them as a threat to humanity itself. A group of elite soldiers come into possession of the most powerful metabands seen yet, with the ability to destroy what was thought to be indestructible: the metabands themselves. With the destruction of the Silver Island Metahuman Detention Facility, Bay View City goes into total lockdown. Alpha Team impose their protection, but at a price: the complete and total ban of metahumans within the city. Refusal to follow is punishable by execution. Forced to leave the city he calls home, Connor is given a second chance at an elite prep school across the bay, one with a very big secret. Rise of The Circle is the third book in the breakout hit series that started with Meta and The Second Wave.
Meta (Book 1)
It’s been ten years since Connor Connolly lost his parents in ‘The Battle’; a fight between The Governor and Jones, two of the world’s strongest metas. Before ‘The Battle’ the world had been full of metas, super-powered humans whose amazing abilities came from mysterious wristbands. Since that day one has never been seen again.
Now 16 years old, Connor lives in Bay View City with his older brother Derrick, a meta-obsessed blogger, where he’s just trying to keep his head down long enough to survive high school. All of that changes the night he attempts to save a girl's life and wakes up to find the first new pair of metabands anyone has seen wrapped around his wrists.
Connor soon finds an unlikely ally in Midnight, a masked vigilante who helps him learn how to harness his new abilities, while also trying to balance his summer job at the lake. As a meta, Connor becomes known as Omni, potentially the most powerful meta the world has ever seen, but it isn’t long before he finds out he's no longer alone...
"A hard genre to pull off successfully, but Reynolds succeeds in giving the two-dimensional heroes of comics a more three-dimensional existence in prose." - The Guardian
"Meta was all the fun I expected. I will certainly be picking up the second in this series." - Boing Boing
The Second Wave (Book 2)
Summer’s over and Connor Connolly is headed back to school to start junior year. But with metabands falling from the sky, the world has changed overnight, and now there are thousands of new metahumans. Just like regular humans, not all metahumans are using their new powers for good. Now, Connor’s not only dealing with the pressures of being a super-human and training with his mentor, Midnight, he also has to balance relationships with the people he cares for most. People who find themselves on different sides of the fence when it comes to their feelings about the new metahumans and the impact they’re having on everyone else’s lives. As the world struggles to adjust to the events of the past few months, Connor’s alter ego, Omni, works with The Agency to apprehend law breaking metahumans, and detain them at the Silver Island Meta Detention Facility. When he’s recruited for a job assisting the government agency with disarming one of the most powerful and secretive metas in Bay View City, he never expects the devastation of that mission or the affect it will have on both humans and metas. Is Connor capable of becoming the hero he wants to be?
Rise of The Circle (Book 3)
As metahumans emerge throughout the world, some greet them as saviors while others see them as a threat to humanity itself. A group of elite soldiers come into possession of the most powerful metabands seen yet, with the ability to destroy what was thought to be indestructible: the metabands themselves. With the destruction of the Silver Island Metahuman Detention Facility, Bay View City goes into total lockdown. Alpha Team impose their protection, but at a price: the complete and total ban of metahumans within the city. Refusal to follow is punishable by execution. Forced to leave the city he calls home, Connor is given a second chance at an elite prep school across the bay, one with a very big secret. Rise of The Circle is the third book in the breakout hit series that started with Meta and The Second Wave.
894 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 13, 2016
68 people are currently reading
39 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 19, 2023
I love the story but there are two things in particular that keep distracting me. 1) I don’t know if the main character is a bit of good writing or terrible writing because on the one hand, he’s a teenager so he’s entitled to some dumb decisions and statements, but on the other hand, he makes a LOT of dumb decisions and statements. The second-hand embarrassment for Connor is strong! It just depends on whether or not that was intentional.
But the second thing is that the power scales are vastly inconsistent. Marvel and DC can get away with it because they’ve been doing it over multiple decades, multiple writers, and multiple universes - retcons and all. But Mr. Reynolds frequently does it throughout this one series, sometimes within the same book. That’s very distracting to me.
An example that I keep coming back to is when Connor says he can’t move or do something fast enough. But this same kid grabbed a villain and ran into a different time zone faster than the villain could mentally register that he’d moved. Then some time later, he’s mere yards at most from a prisoner he’s protecting, and says he can’t get to him in time before another villain would blast him and kill him. For the first feat in this example, even accounting for drained meta bands, he runs halfway around the world, fights the villain, and teleports away to safety. But claims he can’t do significantly easier tasks due to a lack of power or speed. It doesn’t make sense.
And there’s something weird going on with the number of members of Alpha Team. The writing goes on as if there’s an extra member of the team (Alpha) who is never mentioned. Beta is team leader of Alpha team. That means there’s Beta, Charlie, Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot. Connor is briefly assigned as Golf. The book says that Connor was left alone with six soldiers but he would be the sixth. Two of them die on the mission, but later on, after Beta is dead, they outline a “five-pronged attack” against each member of Alpha team - Charlie (the new leader), Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot. Who was the fifth prong of the attack? Alpha was never mentioned as existing and Beta was dead. (Two more of them died too but I guess they were replaced???)
Despite all of this, I continue reading the series because it really is a good series! The inconsistencies are just jarring!
But the second thing is that the power scales are vastly inconsistent. Marvel and DC can get away with it because they’ve been doing it over multiple decades, multiple writers, and multiple universes - retcons and all. But Mr. Reynolds frequently does it throughout this one series, sometimes within the same book. That’s very distracting to me.
An example that I keep coming back to is when Connor says he can’t move or do something fast enough. But this same kid grabbed a villain and ran into a different time zone faster than the villain could mentally register that he’d moved. Then some time later, he’s mere yards at most from a prisoner he’s protecting, and says he can’t get to him in time before another villain would blast him and kill him. For the first feat in this example, even accounting for drained meta bands, he runs halfway around the world, fights the villain, and teleports away to safety. But claims he can’t do significantly easier tasks due to a lack of power or speed. It doesn’t make sense.
And there’s something weird going on with the number of members of Alpha Team. The writing goes on as if there’s an extra member of the team (Alpha) who is never mentioned. Beta is team leader of Alpha team. That means there’s Beta, Charlie, Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot. Connor is briefly assigned as Golf. The book says that Connor was left alone with six soldiers but he would be the sixth. Two of them die on the mission, but later on, after Beta is dead, they outline a “five-pronged attack” against each member of Alpha team - Charlie (the new leader), Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot. Who was the fifth prong of the attack? Alpha was never mentioned as existing and Beta was dead. (Two more of them died too but I guess they were replaced???)
Despite all of this, I continue reading the series because it really is a good series! The inconsistencies are just jarring!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 11, 2024
DNF at 26%, after finding nothing about the author's prose had improved at all in book 2.
Book one is firmly YA, by MC age (16) and the grade level of the prose. Not long into it I started skimming. The worldbuilding/magic system is okay but way over-explained. There are few typos. However, there's too much clutter, repetitive or pointless musings or conversations, and some short, pointless chapters. And then... Wow. That was a terrible ending to an unimpressive story. He doesn't even get to affect the plot, other people do. If that's a spoiler, consider yourself forewarned; the author had not learned enough to deliver a good story.
When book 2 starts out with an over-explained fight and an equally over-explained super prison, I just... I don't care. So I'm done.
Book one is firmly YA, by MC age (16) and the grade level of the prose. Not long into it I started skimming. The worldbuilding/magic system is okay but way over-explained. There are few typos. However, there's too much clutter, repetitive or pointless musings or conversations, and some short, pointless chapters. And then... Wow. That was a terrible ending to an unimpressive story. He doesn't even get to affect the plot, other people do. If that's a spoiler, consider yourself forewarned; the author had not learned enough to deliver a good story.
When book 2 starts out with an over-explained fight and an equally over-explained super prison, I just... I don't care. So I'm done.
October 11, 2024
I thought this book was very well put together with few typos and just the odd continuity flub. Coming of age story on steroids! The premise was very good and there was certainly enough to keep you interested. I liked the smart ass, snarkey comments from the main character which seemed very current. It seems the writer had a good insight into the intricacies of the typical bully and peer pressure. It would be too simplistic to dismiss as an adolescent pipedream, but given that the main character was only 16, it fits together really well. Would highly recommend
partly-read
July 3, 2024I don't know why it is, but almost without exception, people who write superhero prose are terrible at punctuation. This one introduced an error I've never seen before: a semicolon before the main verb in a sentence, which is even worse than a comma before the main verb.
It bugged me enough that I couldn't stick with it, especially since everything else seemed pretty standard-issue.
It bugged me enough that I couldn't stick with it, especially since everything else seemed pretty standard-issue.
December 14, 2020
Awesome
Great read!! This story has kept me reading late at night. Absolutely loved it. I cant wait to read more
Great read!! This story has kept me reading late at night. Absolutely loved it. I cant wait to read more
April 20, 2021
Initially fun with decent writing but then it got too violent for me and was no longer enjoyable so I stopped reading about one third of the way through.
March 2, 2017
Good read.
I'm looking forward to more installments. The tone was just right. Besides a few editing mistakes, very well done. Not as many cliches as I expected.
I'm looking forward to more installments. The tone was just right. Besides a few editing mistakes, very well done. Not as many cliches as I expected.
Read
October 11, 2018Good quick read. The premise is similar to "I am Number Four"
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews