Ben Braver and the Incredible Exploding Kid

 Hi guys, this is the sequel to my previous blog on The Super Life of Ben Braver. Compared to the previous book, this one sees some similarities and differences that I wanted to highlight in this blog.

The book begins with Ben returning to the Kepler Academy, the school for kids that have "superpowers", although Ben does not have any, he's allowed to come back for saving the school the previous year. At first, it seems like it's going to be a normal year; no more supervillians, no more fires, and no more evil, but Ben soon starts to get more sad about being at the school. At first, he thought it would be an amazing experience, but as he watches his classmates powers grow even better, while he still has none, he feels left out. 

After the start of the year, Ben discovers that there was a fan club made for him, for saving the school last year. He begins to go to underground meetings where students have power fights, where they see who has the strongest power. Ben wins every time, although he has no power, because he cheats, such as when his invisible friend Jordan, who makes the crowd think he has mind-manipulation (because Jordan attacks the person while Ben moves his arms around making it seem like he's doing it), and he borrows an anti-gravity suit from his science teacher, making it seem like he has levitating powers.

But then, someone from his fan club who had worshipped him along with the rest of his fan club, finds out that he has no power. His power is stealing peoples powers by biting them; he decides to bite Ben, but when nothing happens, he figures out Ben actually has no power. Ben's fan club disintegrates.

After this, Ben is really bummed out, and spends his time looking through yearbooks, and thats when he realizes something strange. Every year, there's the same mysterious little kid in an Elvis Presley mask that shows up every year in the yearbook. Along with that, in Donald Kepler's (the former headmaster of the school) seceret hideout, there is news cutouts showing that "The Reaper Destroys New York City" and "The Reaper to Destroy Earth", which Ben finds disturbing, as none of these events actually happened.

Near the end of the school year, a Supervillian former students come to the Kepler Academy, demanding Kepler. She has possibly one of the strongest powers; dark energy, which she can use to do many things including taking control of people. This dark energy also means that she will explode if the armor keeping her energy inside is removed. She threatens to remove her armor unless Kepler gets her brother back. Ben is confused, as he knows that her brother had turned to stone a while ago, but then he realizes; Keplers power is time travel! Suddenly everything makes sense. All the news headlines he had seen in Keplers hideout had happened in a different timeline, which Kepler then changed to save the world. "The Reaper" had been attatched to his younger self as he time travelled around.

Overall, Ben Braver and the Incredible Exploding Kid was a really fascinating, although somewhat confusing book. I would definitely reccomeend to anyone interested in science fiction or paradoxes, because a lot of that happens in this book. I'd give it a 4/5, it's well written but still kind of confusing. 

- Alex

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