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Title: After the Golden Age
Author: Carrie Vaughn
Genre: Superhero
Thingummies: 4.5
Synopsis: The unpowered adult daughter of the city's greatest superheroes is tired of being kidnapped every other week.
Thoughts: This is exactly what I would want in a novel about superheroes. It's not a parody or takedown of the form--it's a genuine exploration of themes in greater detail but with fewer big set pieces than you would get in a comic book series, but with a self-awareness that doesn't play everything perfectly straight. It's using the strengths of a different storytelling medium to their greatest effect. And it's a well-paced, emotionally compelling, plain-old-good-read.
Celia is a forensic accountant, and a good one. It doesn't much matter to her father, Captain Olympus, who has never valued anything she's done since she failed to develop superpowers. The fact that it's her work that puts his greatest enemy behind bars, something the superhero was never able to do, merely makes him angry. But over the course of the trial, secrets about Celia's past come to light, ruining the life she's managed to construct for herself.
There's some fabulously-written angst here, as Celia loses everything because of mistakes she made a long time ago. It's not overdone, and it doesn't wallow, but certain places brought a genuine lump to my throat. There's also a surprisingly sweet love story.
I did manage to mostly figure out one mystery early on, but was sufficiently distracted by other plot elements not to feel let down when my guess turned out to be correct. It was merely satisfying--yes, that makes sense.
There are only two bits that didn't really work for me. Given how fast everyone turns on Celia, I thought the speed at which many of them change their minds was unrealistic. And a critical piece of information is never really addressed, probably to protect a plot point. Commerce City must be the only city in the world with super heroes. The casualness of the relationship between the heroes and the city, as well as each other, deliberately parallels a DC- or Marvel-style universe, in which every city has at least a handful of superheroes and villains, and new ones crop up all the time. However, the ending only makes sense if this is not the case.
These are fridge logic flaws--things that will not bother you until you get up afterward to go get a snack. Within the world of the book, however, the compelling characters make for an engrossing, and bittersweet, read.
Author: Carrie Vaughn
Genre: Superhero
Thingummies: 4.5
Synopsis: The unpowered adult daughter of the city's greatest superheroes is tired of being kidnapped every other week.
Thoughts: This is exactly what I would want in a novel about superheroes. It's not a parody or takedown of the form--it's a genuine exploration of themes in greater detail but with fewer big set pieces than you would get in a comic book series, but with a self-awareness that doesn't play everything perfectly straight. It's using the strengths of a different storytelling medium to their greatest effect. And it's a well-paced, emotionally compelling, plain-old-good-read.
Celia is a forensic accountant, and a good one. It doesn't much matter to her father, Captain Olympus, who has never valued anything she's done since she failed to develop superpowers. The fact that it's her work that puts his greatest enemy behind bars, something the superhero was never able to do, merely makes him angry. But over the course of the trial, secrets about Celia's past come to light, ruining the life she's managed to construct for herself.
There's some fabulously-written angst here, as Celia loses everything because of mistakes she made a long time ago. It's not overdone, and it doesn't wallow, but certain places brought a genuine lump to my throat. There's also a surprisingly sweet love story.
I did manage to mostly figure out one mystery early on, but was sufficiently distracted by other plot elements not to feel let down when my guess turned out to be correct. It was merely satisfying--yes, that makes sense.
There are only two bits that didn't really work for me. Given how fast everyone turns on Celia, I thought the speed at which many of them change their minds was unrealistic. And a critical piece of information is never really addressed, probably to protect a plot point. Commerce City must be the only city in the world with super heroes. The casualness of the relationship between the heroes and the city, as well as each other, deliberately parallels a DC- or Marvel-style universe, in which every city has at least a handful of superheroes and villains, and new ones crop up all the time. However, the ending only makes sense if this is not the case.
These are fridge logic flaws--things that will not bother you until you get up afterward to go get a snack. Within the world of the book, however, the compelling characters make for an engrossing, and bittersweet, read.
