“Turn to Paige Never” by Adam Knave

 This is the latest installment of the Great Ace Digital BookBox! I really enjoyed this book, I thought it was a really interesting and fun adventure story, equal parts fantasy and sci-fi. The characters are delightful, and the whole world being built is complex yet manageable.

This story follows Paige Never, a woman known for travelling the globe and helping out people in need from supernatural forces. She is about to give up that life when she is found by Anders, a young man attempting to locate Paige and learn from her. Paige saved Anders when he was a kid, and ever since then he has wanted to follow in her footsteps. Grudgingly, Paige lets him tag along on a couple of her adventures as they investigate a group of people trying to assassinate her and muck up the Earth. This leads them to Paige’s home in another dimension and back again, with Anders learning and Paige falling back in love with her profession the whole time.

The true highlight of this book is Paige herself. A sassy badass, she is always quick to dole out impressive lines to the bad guys and do incredible things. Her main powers are in manipulating the energy around her, whether with her body or her reliable pair of WarBoots. It is sad to say, I didn’t realize until we were a couple chapters in that Paige was a woman since she was written in such a cool, smooth way. But I am so so glad that her character exists.

Beyond that, the world created in this story is incredible. I felt as though I was learning along with Anders, and that constantly new facts and organizations would be cropping up. Paige explains them all, to both Anders and the reader, in a very understandable way. Having the two of them constantly talking through their plans and especially having Anders as a stand-in for the audience definitely helped a lot, but it never takes you out of the story. Every explanation is presented in a quirky way, whether it is Paige talking about giraffes and their necks in a way that demonstrates what is wrong with the world or breaking down some basic physics to explain her job.

And the representation! Anders reveals himself to be asexual and aromantic, about the same time that Paige is shown to have dated other women. Having a duo like that is so refreshing, because it means that there is no way that they would fall for each other and thus completely side-steps all of the disgusting Bond tropes. The two of them become incredibly close friends, with Paige learning to be grateful for Anders’ questions and his company.

I adored reading this book, and I would strongly recommend it for all that are interested! In fact I would be picking up a sequel, but there does not appear to be any at this time. Paige’s world sounds incredible, and I would gladly read several more books on this sassy, smart duo any time.