Mashups are increasingly common as an easy way of coming up with a "new" idea without really inventing anything. This can be fun or terrible, depending on the skill of the author.
For example, the Ex-Heroes series by Peter Clines, which combines superheroes and zombies works well enough that he's got four books out of the premise and I've read them all. It's helped along by some impressively drawn characters. Conversely, there's the "oh look, a passing bandwagon" series, which was sparked by Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and floundered somewhere around Abe Lincoln Werewolf Hunter. (Also, just for the Butcher fans, I know Alera is Romans vs Pokemon. Didn't read it.)
So this new book by James Alan Gardner gets a rather wary eye, as it smacks urban fantasy into superheroes. The world is effectively ruled by "darklings" who are old money families who've managed to buy their way into the immortality gig by hunting down vampires, werewolves and the like and hitting them on the nose with a rolled up cheque until they drop the treat.
In this scenario, the "treat" is the Dark Conversion, a ritual which turns a person into their darkest fear, such as a vampire, ghost or non-specific demon, which is limited only by the author's imagination. These people are the "Dark" (insert sarcastic/witty observation about things deserving capital letters here).
Since it's a basic rule of the universe that there must be balance, there is also a force called the Light, which goes around turning people into superheroes ("sparks"), so that they can fight back against the Dark. Naturally, the first one of these in-universe is a nod and a wink away from Superman.
With that set dressing, we meet our four protagonists, who get handily empowered just in time to stop a major catastrophe and then have to prevent a mad genius from giving Darklings superpowers.
The book hits all the right spots in terms of a super book, but that's honestly part of the problem. It tries to tweak away from the norm, with a queer hero who has a fairly interesting power set, a more meta style of first person snark than usual and some effort to make it a story about the tropes of the superhero genre, but nothing ever really jumped off the page at me.
Maybe I've read too many superhero books. Or it's just being held up against MJ-12 from last week and doesn't quite compare. Either way, I finished it in the hopes that it would become more dynamic, but I struggled. Zircon, our viewpoint hero just isn't particularly likeable and the supporting cast aren't much better.
There's some good world-building here, and the meta-trope idea is one that I can enjoy when it's done right. The idea of the Light and the Dark essentially being the plot tropes acting on the universe has the potential for some enjoyable craziness (the example I thought of first in which the medium partly is the "message" is probably the Buffy musical episode).
The trouble is that this is all viewed through the lens of Zircon's ennui, which makes everything feel flat. For instance, there's a certain reveal late in the book, which reframes quite a lot of the earlier action. If that reveal had been brought forward and allowed a different set of character interactions, maybe I'd have cared more if everyone lived or died. Instead there's about 80% of the book in which the major theme is the general dysfunction of the superteam, and the sub plot is how Zircon doesn't know her place in the world. That could be an excellent heroic arc (and has been often enough) but it doesn't quite work.
There's an attempt to spread the focus through the whole team of four as this is planned as the first book of a series, each of which will centre around a different team member, but it could have done with a tighter focus on Zircon to allow her to be a bit more likeable and more depth in just about everything.
This has been a rather subjective review. The book is proficient, follows a decent arc, and has a good baseline of weirdness that should provide an interesting world to explore. I just found it more workmanlike than "sparkling".
Not recommended.
Tagged: Book Superhero Origin story Novel Print