Superhero Fiction (not comics)

I'm partway through Invasion: Book One of the Secret World Chronicle by Mercedes Lackey, Steve Libbey, Dennis Lee and Cody Martin. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to finish it.

I'm sorry if this upsets some of our fellow players (such as the ones who wrote this book) but, to be honest, a lot of this reads like second-rate CoH fan fiction. It's very disjointed, with sketchily-drawn characters and lapses into passive voice too often. In fact, it starts in that mode. For a book about an invasion of giant Nazi mechs, that's an odd choice. Some of the characters come across just like typical Mary Sues, such as the heroine who lives with her psychic cat. It's so cliche that I actually groaned aloud when I got to that section. The problem is things like that aren't inverted or played with in any way: they're just straight up look-at-me-I-wrote-a-story-about-my-cat. This goes the same for the weapon fetish dude and one other character that I have already forgotten.

Some things are just amateurish, such as when a squad of Nazi mechs beat down Kid Zero. Of all the characters introduced, Kid Zero was the only one with A) an interesting name and B) cool powers. Kid Zero can divide into two people: Kid Plus and Kid Minus. As soon as he was introduced I thought, "Finally! Someone whose name doesn't sound like a second choice in the costume creator!" (Mercurye, Belladonna Blue, Victoria Victrix, Gyrefalcon.) Cool name, interesting concept, killed two paragraphs after his introduction. Talk about a waste.

Kid Zero even has an interesting but silly death, because when they beat up one of his forms the other explodes like a miniature nuclear bomb. Now, I'm not sure why beating up Kid Minus caused Kid Plus to explode like a bomb -- seems dumb to split into two and both be twice as vulnerable. A power such as that sounds like it would've proven fatal long ago: catch one, kill both. When Mercurye... I'm sorry, that name still looks like a typo. When Mercurye flies over the crater, he calls the kid's death "an unintentional suicide bombing."

I read lines like that and I say to myself, "Did no one edit this? Did no one proofread it?" What the hell is an unintentional suicide? "Suicide" has the intent built into the word. One might say, "It looked like the aftereffects of suicide bombers but on a larger scale," but it sure wasn't an "unintentional suicide."

A few pages after that the 100-foot stone-form mutant named Mountain steps on a German Shepherd for -- apparently -- comic effect. Ha ha **** you.

There's a really good story here fighting to get out. Unfortunately, none of these writers have the superpower to allow it to escape.

Fortunately, after putting down Invasion and reading Robopocalypse (don't bother, it's a bad WWZ with robots), I moved on to The Falling Machine (The Society of Steam, Book One) by Andrew Mayer.

As you can see by the cover, this is a superhero steampunk book. Given the recent booster pack in CoH, the timing is fortuitous. Given also the last few books I read, the fact that this one is actually quite good was enormously refreshing.

This is a sort of "1880s Justice League/Avengers" with a number of characters who fill familiar tropes: you've got your Batman analogue, your Captain America type, the Vision/Red Tornado... you get the idea. But then Mayer does what good writers do: they give you the familiar and then they give it a quarter twist until you are no longer on familiar ground. Some characters are not who they seem to be, most have more depth than you first suspect and all have impulses, intentions and interests which diverge and conflict, just like real people.

It's a debut novel and it's not perfect. My reaction to it may be rosier because the dross that had gone before it in my reading pile, but I'm not blind to its imperfections. For one thing, it's book one of an intended series, so there's a lot of set-up and it doesn't have a wham-bam conclusion. There are also parts where it drags somewhat and it does fall into the trap of many steampunk stories where it gets fussy about the tech. All in all, though, those are minor quibbles in an otherwise entertaining story.

One thing I do really like about this book is that it's steampunk science fiction rather than steampunk fantasy. It's science fiction in the same way Flash Gordon and The Rocketeer are: light on the science, heavy on the fiction with a double helping of adventure. It's a lot of fun and a nice twist on the steampunk genre.

The next installment comes out Nov. 22. Sign me up!

One person's heroic sacrifice is another's intentional suicide.

Just finished "Fort Freak" the Wild Cards novel.

Very enjoyable read.

Wild Cards continues to just be an outstanding setting, with vivid moving characters.

Why has nobody mentioned that the sequel to Peter Cline's Ex-Heroes came out? I know that Ironik mentioned it was being worked on but I only recently learned it had been published. I picked it up as an e-book yesterday and am hooked.

Unless it falls apart by the end, Ex-Patriots is even better than the first book. Seriously compelling page-turner, I had to force myself to put the book down so as not to finish it in one sitting.

So if anyone else managed to miss this book - Ex-Patriots by Peter Clines - now you know it exists.

Got another good one. Blaze of Glory I downloaded this yesterday and read it in one sitting. Well one sitting with an hour break to watch Full Metal Jousting.

3 of 5 capes.

Although the story is slow to start, it builds nicely to a satisfying climax worthy of superhero fiction.

The main character is the only one who is really fully-developed, but that's not much of a detriment. She's the normal daughter of the premiere superheroes of the city (and the planet, apparently, although not much is said of the wider world) who has a serious black mark on her record due to some teenage rebellion. Of course, when you rebel by joining the supervillain arch-nemesis of your parents, it's kind of big deal.

Trying to distance herself from her past and her famous family, Celia goes to college and ends up becoming an accountant. Which actually plays a fairly large role in the book's primary confict and leads to the best line in the whole piece. Celia felt fully realized and has inner conflicts which come across as quite real. I enjoyed how the tale grew from a small inner conflict to a larger outer one. This didn't rock me back on my heels or anything, but it's a really solid story that has a fresh look at superheroes.

The only things which hold it back are the slight failings of the reveals and not pushing some of the core ideas. Once Celia starts thinking about the essential mystery at the heart of the story, she postulates her theory -- which ends up being the correct conclusion. It's just a matter of getting the pieces in place to build her case. There's no sense of danger, even when she's doing things which are otherwise extra-legal.

I also was surprised at the love interest angle. Since she tends toward the paranoid side, her all-too-brief questioning of the love interest's ulterior motives seemed odd. Based on what she's like in other aspects of her life, ultimately accepting the relationship without some deep soul-searching felt a bit off.

All in all, though, it's a good story and I was interested all the way through.

4 of 5 capes

This novel was a fast read. I leapt through the pages like the titular characters leaping across roofs. I don't generally read YA novels, having left my YA years far behind, but it's one of the few ways to get some superhero fiction these days. I read the first two pages and was hooked. The writing was direct, the witty dialogue actually witty, and the action nicely delineated.

As I was reading I was struck by how much the main character, Bright Boy, is clearly an analogue of Robin, while his mentor, Phantom Justice, is Batman. Although Bright Boy is really a mash-up of Robin and Spider-man, and the story is not dissimilar from the Incredibles in some aspects... and at that point you have to realize that despite certain elements being similar to other superhero tales, this is its own beast.

There are multiple mysteries of minor and major import which get unraveled once Bright Boy discovers that his arch-nemesis, Monkeywrench, is actually one of the more popular kids at his school. (That's on the inside flap, so not a spoiler. Also, given the tenor of the book, you have to expect that to happen.) Technically Monkeywrench is the *sidekick* to Phantom Justice's archenemy Dr. Chaotic, but it works out to be the same. Of course, at school Bright Boy -- Scott -- gets bullied and despite being a "plus/plus" (increased strength, added speed) he can't respond in kind. Also, he's actually a good guy who takes this hero thing seriously. Problem is, he can't get close to anyone for fear of compromising his secret identity and exposing his classmates to danger.

Aside from constant harassment at school, Bright Boy gets humiliated in a number of ways, because going through puberty as a very public superhero in a skin-tight outfit isn't easy. This ultimately leads to a confrontation with Phantom Justice which creates even more tension in Scott's life.

Once all the game pieces fall into place, the story kicks into high gear and Bright Boy is backed into a corner in all parts of his life. There are twists and turns aplenty, but the overall impression from the book is one of fun.

My only minor nitpick is the ending. it feels a bit muddied to me, without the clarity of the rest of the book. It almost feels like it could use a second round of polish. But this is a slight thing to complain about. This was a delight to read and I ripped through it.

3.5 capes out of 5

Ex-Patriots is the sequel to Ex-Heroes. It's not quite as engaging as the first book was, half because it's not as revelatory and half because the story itself isn't as awesome. If Ex-Heroes is the "KAPOW!" then Ex-Patriots is the "Biff!"

A direct analogy: Iron Man was an awesome movie, revelatory for making the character compelling and altogether amazing, while Iron Man 2 was competently made. That's how these books compare. As with Iron Man 2, I recommend Ex-Patriots to anyone who is a fan of the first one. It's nice to get back into that world and see those people again.

I'm not going to lie, though... I really hope the third installment, Ex-Communication, blows my hair back the way Ex-Heroes did.

Glad to see Ironik back and updating this thread.

I've noticed two new superhero prose works have been released recently, so there is definitely fodder for more here. Perhaps I will post some reviews myself if I feel up to it.

I thought I would help out by posting a review of one of the superhero books I recently finished. A couple words on how I did the ratings might be handy first. Instead of just giving an overall rating, I gave three scores. The first measures how interesting or original or creative or entertaining the ideas for the story and its elements are in the abstract. The second measures how well the author did in bringing them to the page. Essentially, it's a measure of what I believe the author's writing skill to be. The third is how much I, personally, liked the book and is far more subjective than the others. I did it this way so my own preferences don't interfere much in my rating of the book's abstract quality. As an example, I would score the popular Ex-Heroes as (5/4/3) because it has very strong concepts and good execution, but I don't much care for the premise.

Anyway, here is the actual review.

Prepare to Die!, by Paul Tobin

Ratings:
Concepts: 2 of 5
Execution: 3 of 5
Overall Enjoyment: 2.5 of 5

In this novel, a superhero named Reaver is defeated by an assortment of enemies. Rather than killing him right off, though, they grant him ten days to get his life in order, to "prepare to die." Reaver decides to return to his hometown, where he tries to reconnect with his childhood love and experiences various traumatic memories about some of the deceased heroes he's known. (Unfortunately, this makes for lots of flashback and a scattered narrative structure.)

Tobin's goal here seems to be to show a "human" side to his heroes, but his technique is a bit scattered. Reaver is definitely not a squeaky-clean hero; he occasionally kills off an enemy, feels guilt over his deceased brother's fate, and has affairs with pretty much anything in a skirt. In spite of all that, he's portrayed (in first person, an interesting touch) throughout the story as a sympathetic character. There's nothing particularly wrong with any of this, and it's nice to see some superhero fiction that recognizes you don't have to have Batman Morality in order to be the good guy, but it doesn't really add much, either. Tobin is on steadier ground when he deals with Reaver's awkwardness in reconnecting with someone he hasn't seen in years, but the challenges Reaver faces there are minimal enough that there isn't a strong sense of narrative tension.

Tobin also subscribes to the "it's all a sham" view of hero vs. villain conflicts that's so popular among writers of superhero prose, but this doesn't become apparent until the finale. Unusually, he argues that the sham is *good* rather than bad. Still, I felt that this addition was kind of an unnecessary left turn in the story. For much of the book, I felt I was reading a pastiche of something along the lines of Soon I Will Be Invincible, until suddenly, in the last chapter, it became a pastiche of Watchmen.

Where the book really shines is an element thrown in almost incidentally: the villains. With the exception of Reaver's nemesis, who is a fairly uninteresting (to me, anyway) Ozymandias-genius-for-betterment-of-the-world type, the villains in this story are patently evil and wantonly destructive. They routinely wipe out innocents in horrible ways and are absolutely without remorse. I haven't seen the supervillain-as-monster done this well in prose before; the closest I've seen to this is the commentary in the collected edition of the comic "Justice," where one of the artists makes the same point.

An additional strong point of this book is the way Tobin throws in references to the way his world deals with superheroes (and villains). Reaver provides a running commentary on the websites, books, news reports, porno-movies, and the like that deal with his exploits, as well as the way bystanders react to him (and other super-characters). Tobin handled this with a lot of thoroughness and believability. Unfortunately, the setting is otherwise kind of characterless.

Overall, I recommend this book if you're interested in superhero fiction, period, or if you want a somewhat different take on the issues presented in Watchmen (you'll have to read the whole thing to understand why I say so), or if you like to watch totally psychotic villains get thrashed. If your interest in superhero fiction is less completist, or if you can't tolerate long stretches without action (at least as much space is devoted to the antics of Reaver's girlfriend's "charmingly" goofy older sister or to the significance of makeout sessions as to superhero matters), or if you prefer super-protagonists to have a more squeaky-clean morality, you should give it a pass.

I hope you found that helpful.

The book listed below is a Superhero police procedural I’m interested in picking up.


The Case of the Claw - SCPD #1
By Keith R. A. DeCandido


Website Description:

I have read a couple superhero books recently that I liked well enough, well, one book and one series.

One that I finished just last night was Subject 12 by S.W Douglas. I got it off Amazon on my kindle for $4. It ended kind of abruptly, but from the ending I would expect more in the series. It's on the darker side of things, the main character is moderately violent, and even though it's always from his POV you can often understand why other characters are a bit leery of him. However I did like it a fair bit and I'm looking forward to future books. However it's not a YA book and I would recommend reading it yourself before anyone decides to let their kids read it. I also have to say that it's a self published book, so there are some typos and editing issues. I am not really bothered by that kind of thing, I tend to gloss over them due to the way I read, but if that kind of thing bothers you a lot, then you might want to pass.

Secondly I wanted to mention a series I have read that I liked. The series is the Infected series by P.S Power, also on Amazon. The books are fairly interesting, and the premise of the supers and world is cool, if a bit dark in some ways. Basically some people randomly become "Infected" though it's not a disease and they don't really know how or why it happens, though there are some indications that it is passed genetically. Infected people gain some kind of ability, but it's not always useful, kind of like wild cards, though not as bad generally. However every Infected person also gains what they call a first mode. A first mode is an emotion or concept that becomes overpowering for the Infected person. There is a fair range of first modes the author comes up with. With discipline and training an infected can learn to somewhat overcome thier first mode, but it's always impacting. Supervillans are often Infected who's first mode is something dangerous or distructive, though there are some villains who are just bad guys because they want to be.

Some examples of first modes from the stories, one hero's first mode is ego, so he always wants to be in front of the camera. The protagonist in the first book, his first mode is a sort of combo self sacrifice/protective instinct that makes him want to protect everyone. Another character's first mode is suspicion, not quite paranoia, but close. In the series there is a lot of prejudice against Infected people. It's of the main conflicts in the books.

There are three books in the series so far, Infected:Proxy, Infected: Gabriel, and Cast Iron. I liked the series, but one problem I had was that the protagonist changed for each book. Which is something I tend to not prefer. However each book is good, and does involve many of the same characters. It also basically continues the same overall story, just following different characters.

Thanks for all the tips on superhero fiction, gang!

Adam Christopher's Seven Wonders was released on August 28th. I have not read it but plan to since I enjoyed his book Empire State. More info about Seven Wonders can be found here: http://angryrobotbooks.com/our-autho...m-christopher/

i've enjoyed more than one of these books thanks to the folks in this thread pointing them out.

and have a growing list of books to read as well!!

thanks all.


one more thing though, go to amazon/B&N, find a superhero fiction book and click the i want a "digital" edition button please. can't for the life of me figure out why they take so much darned time to get these out in digital format.

and if anyone has read the wildcards series, or is currently reading it, if you hear anything about books 4-6 being released digitally, an update in this thread would be awesome.