Rating: WARTY!
From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
I did not like this one bit and ditched it in disgust after 10%. That's a lot less than I normally give a book that I do not like. Usually I can soldier on, and I try to cover at least a quarter or a third, and sometimes half or more of a novel like this, but I honestly could not stand to read this one at all. It just felt bad and wrong in every way. The book is a sequel, which I knew going in, and it was not a problem - except that of course I had no background for these characters, having been unaware of the first novel when it came out; but if I'd read that I probably wouldn't be reading this one; so - swings and carousel!
What it meant was that I was meeting these people for the first time and I was sorry the author didn't help. The assumption seems to be that any reader of this volume has just completed volume one and is immediately going into volume two, which didn't work in my case. Naturally no author wants to rewrite entire character biographies in each volume, and no one who is following a series wants or needs that either, but for readers coming in new, or after a long layoff, a few words of context here and there would not have hurt, and would not have been obtrusive. I didn't get those, which made it difficult to get into, and difficult to relate to the characters. An action scene right up front, showing off these people, would have worked well, but it didn't come.
The real problem for me though, is the billing. It's billed as a super hero novel with gay characters, which sounds great, but it's actually a gay novel with superhero characters. That's an important difference. That would not have been an issue either, had it been better written, but as it was it felt juvenile and not in a good way; the entire relationship between Nicky and Seth seems to be physical with nothing else to hold it together, and that's not a good thing in a world that seems like it's entirely a no-consequence world.
As for the lack of consequences, at one point for example, the teens spend, without permission, ten thousand dollars on equipment they decide they want for their super hero team, which is not only irresponsible, it's dishonest. It's theft, in effect, yet no one feels bad and no one gets in trouble. That just felt inauthentic. These are the heroes?! Ten thousand dollars is not an insignificant amount, even for a wealthy family. That sabotaged the suspension of disbelief for me.
Appropriating large sums of money is hardly heroic, but the weird thing is that the novel seems not to differentiate between good guys and bad guys if judged by the book description, which has them all as heroes. It tells us: "with new heroes arriving in Nova City it's up to Nick and his friends to determine who is virtuous and who is villainous." Why? Why is it up to these teenagers? And why are 'new heroes' arriving in Nova City (not a very imaginative name)? What's the attraction? Why there as opposed to somewhere else?
The thing is that I don't honestly get how a villain is a hero. Not that we met either - not in any meaningful sense in the portion I read. I'd expect a story like this would have some action up front, but the only action is between Nicky and Seth on the bed. Is that the most important thing that's going to happen in this novel? Because if that's all the story is about why even have supers in it? Why not just two horny young guys in bed and call it Flash Junk?
This is a problem with series, and why I'm typically not a fan. The first volume in a series is the prolog and/or the introductory volume and it seems like the author feels like he did all the action work in volume one as well - which he may well have for all I know - but I don't think that absolves him from bringing some in volume two, but if it's here, it's much further in than I read. What I read felt like a backwater, a doldrums, a slack tide, and it was, frankly, rather boring. It did nothing to substantially introduce me to the characters or to endear me to them. From what I read of them here, they felt shallow and thin and I had zero interest in learning any more about any of them.
Worse than this though, is that the ten percent that I read seemed obsessed with the physical relationship between Seth and Nicky, which is broken-up by Nicky's dad, who seems like a jerk who's main passion in life is discussing homemade dental dams. It wasn't clear to me where this story is taking place because it's one of those fake cities that DC Comics favors, rather than real world locations, but the idea is that Nicky and Seth are under age. Maybe they are, but without a real-world specified locale, at sixteen, you are over the age of consent in about fifty percent of the US states, so in the absence of other information, the chances are just as good that they were legal as not. Evidently they live in a state where the age of consent is higher, but a fake Nova City doesn't help establish anything. The story felt disconnected from reality.
The book blurb tells us that Seth "is the superpowered Pyro Storm, who can manifest fire and spends much of his free time aiding local citizens in their fair city," but it's unclear exactly what he does - and how manifesting fire helps local citizens. Do they have a lot of yard waste to burn? I didn't like 'Pyro Storm' as the hero name. It felt too much like a 'junior X-men' kind of thing, and Nicky's adoration of him felt forced rather than natural, especially given that it was built entirely around sexual attraction - so it seemed from what I read in this volume. Maybe there was a lot more to it - aspects of the relationship that were revealed in volume one - I don't know, but judged by what was written here, I have very little faith that there is more to it and I don't want to read a gay sex novel - not without a lot more substance to it than this novel seems willing to offer.
So based on my admittedly limited reading, I can't commend this. I would have liked more - to have had an incentive to read further, but life is short and novels many and I don't see the point of a forced march through a novel that simply isn't doing it for me as a reader who is looking for a fun, interesting, imaginative, and engaging story, with fascinating characters, an intriguing world, and original situations.
