Author: Ross Cavins
Publisher: RCG Publishing
Rating: WORTHY!
Errata:
Kazakhstan not Kazikstan p54
"I decided to take another tactic." should be "I decided to take another tack." p160
"There's nothing like a sunset over a mountain lake, is it?" makes no sense - unless Barry is Welsh.
Since I'm on a superhero kick lately, here's a third one for consideration. It's very much in the mold of the other two I've been reading in that it takes the road far less traveled. One of the other super hero stories was a novel like this one (Normalized), and the other was a graphic novel (Jupiter's legacy). I very much liked all three of them. It was really nice to get three in a row. It's a rare delight and one which makes it worth plowing through the bad stuff to get really enjoyable ones like these. I think the reason I liked them was that they all of them eschewed trope like it was a bad cliché. Oh, wait, it is!
So this one is about Barry Glick, a super hero who keeps claiming he's retired, but who still uses his powers from time to time for his own purposes (he's not above 'x-ray' scanning the lottery scratch-off tickets for a winner he can buy or for a glimpse at a woman sans clothing), and on occasion for the public good, as in when he foils a liquor store hold up - but only because he happens to be in the store at the time buying beer.
Barry is pretty much an alcoholic, and even when completely sober he has very few social graces, and no illusions about himself. He eats bad food and sports a lot of red-neck traits, the least of which is his mullet. He's a regular down-to-Earth guy except for his super powers, and therein lay a problem. The author simultaneously is telling us that he got his super powers with puberty, but he also got them at fifteen, which is really late for puberty to begin - but not out of the question. I felt that this could have been written a bit more clearly. The question of how and from where these powers came is unexplored to begin with, building something of a mystery which later necessitates a rapprochement with his estranged and abusive father and another relative he didn't even know he had, to resolve.
Barry did his public duty - and not always in an exemplary fashion - until two decades ago, but he got into so much trouble doing it (he's a bit like Hancock) that he thinks he's earned a rest now he;s ion his forties and sporting a growing beer-belly. Super heroes are never paid, recall. They only exist by having a regular job under the guise of an alter-ego, or by being a billionaire. Barry lives alone and makes his living from lottery tickets. He's and is going to seed, his sole hobbies being drinking beer and watching crass TV shows every evening.
On that topic, here's a writing issue for you: is it correct to say "...he's always drank, as the author does on page 229, or "...he's always drunk"? Note that we're talking about the act of drinking, not the state of having drunk too much alcohol. I think the author got it right, but I confess that I had to really think about it and consult a couple of on-line sources before I made up my mind, and even now I'm not sure. I mean, is it correct to say "he's always ran"? or should it be "he's always run"?! I think I'd reword it; then I don't have to risk a headache making a painful and possibly wrong decision! The author gets it right again (I think!) on page 282 where he writes "I laid there for a few minutes." Lay and Lie really are a pain for writers.
Barry thinks he's one of a kind, and he's honest enough (sometimes) to realize that's not necessarily a positive thing, but he's about to get an awakening. His life takes a turn for the interesting when his friend Gordon Moser and Gordon's sister Kimberly show up. Kimmy is an analyst for Homeland Security, but she's always (amusingly in my opinion) impersonating an FBI agent, and she begins wailing on Barry to help find her partner, who's gone missing. How she has a partner when she actually isn't a field agent is a bit of a mystery, but there it is. Andrew unfortunately hasn't been missing long enough for HS to feel that there's a need to start looking for him, but Kimmy has a gut instinct, which is gut enough for Barry, who also has a gut, and a lot of instinct for self-preservation.
This novel is told in first person PoV which I normally detest, but some writers can make it work, and this is one good example of that. Barry is about as politically as incorrect as you can get, and still remain outside of jail and retain a friend, so it's not unusual to hear lines from him like the following one, but this one was also unintentionally amusing. At the start of chapter 20 we read: "She declined my offer to walk around in her underwear eating ice cream." I know what the writer meant, but this makes it sound like Barry is offering to walk around wearing Kimmy's underwear! Just a warning to be careful what you write and how you write it!
Barry is by turns endearing and gross-out nasty, so the author was walking a fine line with me between turning me off this character and making me want to follow his antics. There was a time or two when he ran over the line but he always veered back towards the straight and narrow just in time to keep me reading. Having said that I have to add that chapter thirty six was a disaster. This is where we get a visit from someone in the know and we get Barry's back-story and learn who his mom really was. I'm sorry but I can't take any of that seriously. I felt it was unnecessary, and it really bogged the story down without contributing anything useful to it.
I suppose it was intended to soften us up for a rapprochement between Barry and his dad, but it failed for me - I couldn't realistically see that happening given what we'd been told already. And why was this even deemed necessary? Does every story like this have to end with a kid getting all lovey-dovey with their estranged parent(s) again? Barf. But whatever.
This isn't a graphic novel but there are some pictures in it - at the end of every chapter. They look like first draft pencil sketches of characters, but they have nothing to do with what's been going on in the chapter or with what happens in the next chapter. A significant number of them feature a woman holding a camera, and it's not always the same camera. There's a newspaper reporter in the story but she's never described as holding a camera although she does come armed with pictures the first time she accosts Barry. I was wondering at one point if there was more to her than met the eye, but there really wasn't. The sketches were good but felt weirdly out of place.
I liked that Barry has a beard (after a fashion). That's something you never see on super heroes (except in Mark Millar's Jupiter's Legacy! which I reviewed yesterday). I mean come on - Superman cannot shave - he can't find a razor that won't break on contact, yet he's always as clean and smooth as a baby's patoot? I call super-bullshit on that one! I rather suspect, though, that Barry was perhaps modeled on the author in some respects! They do say write what you know - although in my opinion that's bullshit too. It's termed 'fiction' for good reason!
So, final analysis, and although it did come close a couple of times to failing for me, I recommend this one as a worthy read, with the caveats I've mentioned about Barry and his non-pc attitude and behavior. If you've read Normalized which I'm also reviewing today, you will more than likely enjoy this one and vice-versa.
