Published in 2023, Powerless is the first installment in American author Lauren Roberts’s Powerless trilogy. The series also includes Powerful, a stand-alone novel set in the same universe and focused on Adena, a secondary character in the first book. After the success of the initial installments of the series, the second book in the trilogy, Reckless, received a release date of July 2024.

Roberts transitioned from college to full-time writing by self-publishing her first novel, Powerless, which she began writing when she was 18 years old. After the book gained popularity on social media, Simon & Schuster acquired the rights to Roberts’s work and set out to publish the rest of her upcoming trilogy. Roberts notes that “it truly gives [her] the ability to just write and do what [she loves], and then give that work to someone else who’s also doing what they love” (Ramirez, Amanda. “Q & A With Lauren Roberts.” Publishers Weekly, 23 Apr. 2024).

Roberts’s work is inspired by contemporary young adult novels like Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games series, another dystopian world in which a series of deadly tasks are framed as entertainment but covertly designed to enforce an oppressive political system.