Brilliance

by Marcus Sakey

A conspiracy thriller in a Heroes/X-Men-type setting. Except no one's flying or teleporting; the "Brilliants" in this story are born with gifts, but they're much more to do with exceptional pattern-recognition skills - so, reading people's intentions, honesty or even their movement by their body language, or reading the patterns in the stock market so easily they rack up $3 billion before anyone catches on...

Sakey's main character, Nick Cooper - a Brilliant himself - is very convincing as a federal agent who truly believes that he is helping to keep the balance between Normals and Brilliants by hunting those of his kind who become dangerous... until his world crumbles around him and he's forced to make a decision that could plunge the country into a devastating civil war.

While the concept's not anything new, the world Sakey has built here is much more believable than that in Heroes, X-Men, etc. He also does an amazing job of pulling you into the events through the sometimes agonizing decisions his characters have to make, which always makes for a great read.

The sequel - A Better World - also just came out, so that's my next read!