Roz, Abby, Thunder, Paragon, Brawn, Max and Lance find themselves teleported six years into the past; at the same moment Krodin, the 4500 year-old unkillable warrior brought to the current time by the fanatical Helotry, is nearly destroyed by Pyrokine but instead is inadvertently sent back six years prior to his battle with the young superhumans. Safely anonymous from the Superhuman community, Krodin plots his rise to power within the United States by befriending Max Dalton and using his powers of "persuasion" to his advantage. When the the Superhumans arrive, their world has been turned upside-down. The US is now a closed-border police state controlled by Krodin and his Praetorian guards, nearly all of the superhumans were murdered in a contrived nuclear terrorist attack which destroyed Anchorage and vaulted Krodin to supreme power.

While Roz and Max search for the others, Abby and Thunder look for Brawn, and Lance discovers his family, who had been murdered by Slaughter in his timeline, is still alive. But the world has changed in ways that none of the superhumans can accept, and when they learn of a resistance headed by a superhuman named Daedalus, they join up hoping to help him and the rest of the world fight Krodin.

Sequels often fall short of first novels, but I enjoyed this one immensely. It was action-packed, but thoughtful: Carroll wants his readers to consider the dangers of sacrificing freedom for security, and the slippery-slope toward fascism that this leads to. His characters are well-rounded, and moral--they care about their actions (or at least most do), and recognize that indiscriminate harm on others makes them less "super" because it destroys their integrity and character.

Stronger is the third in the series, and I expect all of the "regulars" will be returning, including our maniacal warrior-"friend," Krodin. ( )

So the battle was over, Krodin disappeared and then suddenly things change. Our heroes find that the world has changed, America is under martial law and they are going to have to make some very hard choices to succeed with their plans.

What's scary is that there are chunks of the non-superhuman loss of rights etc stuff that's completely believable.

And what's going to happen next? Interesting series and I'm curious about what's going to happen next. ( )