If you could have only one superpower… what would it be?
This question is asked over and over again in Thirteen Days To Midnight, and I have to admit, I still don’t know what my answer would be.
In the beginning of the book, the protagonist, Jacob Fielding, ponders the possible answers to this question and he discusses the pros and cons of a couple. Flying would be dangerous, for example, and invisibility seems to be the best superpower, except that it would lead to all sorts of temptation since you’d basically be able to do almost anything without consequence. So he decides that invisibility isn’t a superpower, it’s a “lose-your-soul-to-the-devil power.”
He has a point. With great power comes great responsibility, famous words from another superhero story, and true, because power can be used for good but it can also be abused. Jacob, his girlfriend Oh, short for Ophelia, and his best friend Milo, find out the hard way what happens when they abuse a power that they don’t understand.
Jacob and his friends discover that he has the power of indestructibility, and that he can pass on that power to others and use it to save lives. It would be a really cool power to have, except how do you decide who gets to live and who dies?
They experiment with it, get into fights with it, save a few people with it, and let some others die because the power can only be given to one person at a time. Unfortunately, all those deaths that didn’t happen, have to go somewhere, and so Oh becomes home to all that darkness. Jacob and Milo have to kill her to save her, but how do you kill someone you love?
I enjoyed the story itself because it was well-written and has an interesting plot, but what I really liked about it is that it makes you think. Obviously, there’s a moral to this story and it’s telling us not to abuse power because there are always a consequences. But here’s the thing, what if there are no consequences?
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