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2012 Book Review #50: I, Crimsonstreak
Title: I, Crimsonstreak
Author: Matt Adams
Genre: Superheroes
Thingummies: 2
Synopsis: Locked in an asylum for a crime he didn't commit, Flash-style superhero Crimsonstreak breaks out to find that his reformed villain father is no longer so reformed and has kinda taken over the world. Maybe he should do something about that.
Thoughts: I wanted to like this one, I really did. I like superheroes as a concept, and they don't appear particularly often in book form. This particular novel read like a very promising first draft. Which is unfortunate in a finished work. (Note: I did read an advance copy, but the only changes should be minor grammar and type-setting type fixes.)
I liked the overall idea--a supervillain and a superhero fall in love, and the villain reforms. They have a kid. When the hero mom dies, ex-villain dad gets all obsess-y (like you do). Their hometown blows up and to the kid's shock, his dad blames him and has him committed. When he finally manages to break out years later, he discovers that his dad's still considered a hero, but has taken over the world. Most of the book is him trying to figure out what happened--is Dad good? Evil? Misinformed? Plotting within plots?
And there are some interesting characters--an Alfred-the-butler type only snarky, a bratty scion of a superhero legacy, a doppelganger, an old flame trying to get by in the new regime. The tone is flippant in a way that does get wearing, but is generally fun. There's a lot here to work with.
But it doesn't actually work particularly well. The big plot twist feels more like a cheat, and its explanation is unsatisfying, coming in overly explanatory dialogue. ("As you know, son...") The resolution is even more of a cheat. (If it's necessary that the subvillain stores memories as a power, maybe it would have been a better idea to make him have memory-based powers instead of being a lightning god? As opposed to introducing this power after he's dead, while frantically waving your hands to create an ending you didn't set up or earn?) A couple giant Chekov's guns are hung on the wall (the aliens, the insurrection), but instead of being tied into the climax in a satisfying way, they turn out to be nothing more than very minor devices to set up the situation the way the author wanted it. (For slightly spoilery example, I completely expected the aliens to turn out to have been faked from the beginning as a power grab. If this was revealed to be so, I missed it. If they were real, they're completely misused--earth-shattering event is minor backstory. Shouldn't someone be worried, I dunno, that the aliens might come back?)
And that's really the biggest problem here--everything happens because the plot wants it to, not from any particular internal logic. People agree to help or don't, technology works or it doesn't, simply because that's what needs to happen for the protagonist to get to the next scene, not because of the inherent nature of the technology or the people. For example, in one scene, they've captured a major player from the other side. He's practically foaming at the mouth in his outrage and loyalty to the regime. Crimsonstreak goes somewhere else for basically half a day. When he comes back, the captive has totally joined their side, hurray, because of a conversation off camera in which he had a total change of heart and completely reversed the way he's thought about the entire world for his entire existence. At no point does anyone even doubt this conversion.
It even applies to dialogue. The butler gets some great lines and a couple funny actions and a genuinely poignant moment or two. But his characterization is wildly different from one bit to the next, sometimes even in the same conversation. At some points, he's very much the long-suffering Brit, with bone dry wit and formal diction as he keeps his stiff upper lip while tolerating the follies of his social betters. A breath later, and you're getting an American-style wiseass with no particular respect for anyone, cracking jokes and slinging insults. It's always "butler makes fun of Crimsonstreak", but the manner in which he makes fun of him is completely inconsistent in voice and basic personality from insult to insult.
The book also reads as if the author wrote it all in chunks and never went back to read it again. We'll have three pages of a description of an event, a line break, and then the first three sentences of the new section will be a recap of what just happened. We know--we just read it. I suppose it's possible that the author is trying to parody the little text balloons at the beginning of comic books reminding the reader what happened last issue, but customarily, there's been a month since the last time you read the story and you need the reminder. Here, we just read it. Like, three seconds ago. Haven't forgotten yet, promise. Or perhaps the author wrote that chunk two weeks before and didn't quite remember how much he'd told us, for a less forgiving explanation. In any case, it's annoying. And if he'd gone back and reread things, perhaps he could have made changes at the beginning that would make the later events make more sense, like the memory storage thing.
Also, a warning--there's bonus material. A lot of bonus material. Enough that the end of the book comes deceptively fast, which just makes the rushed arc even more confusing. You figure there's another twist coming, with the number of pages left, but suddenly it's the end. While some of the bonus material is cute--I did like the butler's diary entry about the worst Valentine's Day ever--the newspaper articles are entirely filler. There's literally nothing you didn't already know from explanations throughout the book--no new insights or perspectives. Just the same backstory you've been told, now in dry newspaper article-form.
So the tone was a little hyperactive, but entertaining. The concept had a lot of potential for exploration. But the execution felt shoddy and rushed. It's a pity--with another two or three drafts, there might have been something here.
Author: Matt Adams
Genre: Superheroes
Thingummies: 2
Synopsis: Locked in an asylum for a crime he didn't commit, Flash-style superhero Crimsonstreak breaks out to find that his reformed villain father is no longer so reformed and has kinda taken over the world. Maybe he should do something about that.
Thoughts: I wanted to like this one, I really did. I like superheroes as a concept, and they don't appear particularly often in book form. This particular novel read like a very promising first draft. Which is unfortunate in a finished work. (Note: I did read an advance copy, but the only changes should be minor grammar and type-setting type fixes.)
I liked the overall idea--a supervillain and a superhero fall in love, and the villain reforms. They have a kid. When the hero mom dies, ex-villain dad gets all obsess-y (like you do). Their hometown blows up and to the kid's shock, his dad blames him and has him committed. When he finally manages to break out years later, he discovers that his dad's still considered a hero, but has taken over the world. Most of the book is him trying to figure out what happened--is Dad good? Evil? Misinformed? Plotting within plots?
And there are some interesting characters--an Alfred-the-butler type only snarky, a bratty scion of a superhero legacy, a doppelganger, an old flame trying to get by in the new regime. The tone is flippant in a way that does get wearing, but is generally fun. There's a lot here to work with.
But it doesn't actually work particularly well. The big plot twist feels more like a cheat, and its explanation is unsatisfying, coming in overly explanatory dialogue. ("As you know, son...") The resolution is even more of a cheat. (If it's necessary that the subvillain stores memories as a power, maybe it would have been a better idea to make him have memory-based powers instead of being a lightning god? As opposed to introducing this power after he's dead, while frantically waving your hands to create an ending you didn't set up or earn?) A couple giant Chekov's guns are hung on the wall (the aliens, the insurrection), but instead of being tied into the climax in a satisfying way, they turn out to be nothing more than very minor devices to set up the situation the way the author wanted it. (For slightly spoilery example, I completely expected the aliens to turn out to have been faked from the beginning as a power grab. If this was revealed to be so, I missed it. If they were real, they're completely misused--earth-shattering event is minor backstory. Shouldn't someone be worried, I dunno, that the aliens might come back?)
And that's really the biggest problem here--everything happens because the plot wants it to, not from any particular internal logic. People agree to help or don't, technology works or it doesn't, simply because that's what needs to happen for the protagonist to get to the next scene, not because of the inherent nature of the technology or the people. For example, in one scene, they've captured a major player from the other side. He's practically foaming at the mouth in his outrage and loyalty to the regime. Crimsonstreak goes somewhere else for basically half a day. When he comes back, the captive has totally joined their side, hurray, because of a conversation off camera in which he had a total change of heart and completely reversed the way he's thought about the entire world for his entire existence. At no point does anyone even doubt this conversion.
It even applies to dialogue. The butler gets some great lines and a couple funny actions and a genuinely poignant moment or two. But his characterization is wildly different from one bit to the next, sometimes even in the same conversation. At some points, he's very much the long-suffering Brit, with bone dry wit and formal diction as he keeps his stiff upper lip while tolerating the follies of his social betters. A breath later, and you're getting an American-style wiseass with no particular respect for anyone, cracking jokes and slinging insults. It's always "butler makes fun of Crimsonstreak", but the manner in which he makes fun of him is completely inconsistent in voice and basic personality from insult to insult.
The book also reads as if the author wrote it all in chunks and never went back to read it again. We'll have three pages of a description of an event, a line break, and then the first three sentences of the new section will be a recap of what just happened. We know--we just read it. I suppose it's possible that the author is trying to parody the little text balloons at the beginning of comic books reminding the reader what happened last issue, but customarily, there's been a month since the last time you read the story and you need the reminder. Here, we just read it. Like, three seconds ago. Haven't forgotten yet, promise. Or perhaps the author wrote that chunk two weeks before and didn't quite remember how much he'd told us, for a less forgiving explanation. In any case, it's annoying. And if he'd gone back and reread things, perhaps he could have made changes at the beginning that would make the later events make more sense, like the memory storage thing.
Also, a warning--there's bonus material. A lot of bonus material. Enough that the end of the book comes deceptively fast, which just makes the rushed arc even more confusing. You figure there's another twist coming, with the number of pages left, but suddenly it's the end. While some of the bonus material is cute--I did like the butler's diary entry about the worst Valentine's Day ever--the newspaper articles are entirely filler. There's literally nothing you didn't already know from explanations throughout the book--no new insights or perspectives. Just the same backstory you've been told, now in dry newspaper article-form.
So the tone was a little hyperactive, but entertaining. The concept had a lot of potential for exploration. But the execution felt shoddy and rushed. It's a pity--with another two or three drafts, there might have been something here.
no subject
So what you're saying is this book was written by the Torchwood writers? Cause that's Ianto, right there. *eg*