Reckless

Reckless is the second novel of the Powerless series by Lauren Roberts, published in 2024 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. It continues directly from the end of the first book, which closed with the Purging Trials over, the king dead and a resistance spreading through the kingdom of Ilya, and it assumes the first book has been read.

Paedyn Gray is running, and the person pursuing her is Kai Azer, now the young king's Enforcer. His orders are straightforward: find her, bring her back, and do what the crown requires. He is also the person she would rather not be running from, which is the part of the arrangement that neither of them can put down or name.

The trail takes the two of them across the Scorches and into Dor, a city with no Elites left and no reason to respect either of them. Ilya is in turmoil, the resistance is not a single organisation, and each place they pass through has its own version of what the kingdom should be. The two of them are also the only people who understand what the trials cost, which makes running from each other a complicated kind of company.

The book keeps the two viewpoints and the divided kingdom of the first novel, and it is the middle part of a longer story rather than a self-contained one. Roberts has continued the series with further volumes and novellas set around the same events, which means the later books fill in what Kai and Paedyn each know at different points.