Review: Too much focus on what the characters are, not who they are
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 30, 2014
I was given a copy of this book by the author in exchange for an honest review.I was originally asked to review this because I really enjoy superhero fiction. However, I really don't think I'd qualify this as superhero fiction. More apocalyptic fiction that just happens to involve people (and animals) with superpowers.I wanted to like this book more than I did, but the main thing I had trouble with was the lack of depth in the characters. This story is told from the viewpoints of several different characters. We don't ever find out much about these characters, though. There's not much insight into who they are. Instead the book tends to focus on what they are, what they can do, and what's going on with this apocalyptic event.Eventually more keystones are introduced that play large or small roles, but overall these new keystones seem to only exist to show off the powers of the main characters.There are also two distinct storylines at the beginning...I actually thought the initial one was simply setting up how everyone got their superpowers, but it finally pops back up at the end of the book in a way that felt disjointed to me. The book is set up for a sequel, quite obviously. No cliffhangers, but I think it's fairly obvious the author intends to continue the series from how it ended.