Review: Awesome read! All I can say is: Brian Yi-ppee!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 2, 2013
How much did I like this story? I wasn't even halfway done reading it when I went and purchased the (so far) five sequels. So, yeah, PROXY is the first in P.S. Power's tales of the Infected, a series that's X-Men-y in its angst and wildly intense in its action beats. I'm trying hard not to spoiler things too much when, omigosh, all I want to do is rave about the thing. Part of the big fun is that I had no idea where the narrative would take me. No one should take that away from you, dear reader.No one knows the source of it but, in this book's reality, this strange infection can strike at any person, endowing them with some superhuman knack. Not all superpowers are beneficial. When 22-year-old factory stacker Brian Yi becomes infected, he gains the ability to abruptly trade places with random people who are moments away from being killed. Consider that Brian is this timid, overweight underachiever and has absolutely no control over this ability, and you figure that the odds are very much stacked against his long-term survival.P.S. Power constructs a riveting mythology, building on superhero tropes and extrapolating from there. This isn't groundbreaking stuff because other postmodern works have already explored real world consequences with superheroes factored in. The character beats are what really sold me. Brian Yi is one special cat, and I challenge you to not root for the guy. There are many other characters I relished as well (invisible Penny, temporal master/master chef Mark, excitable 14-year-old Bridget, etc.).One thing I should mention is that all infected are driven by a primary emotional mode, some trait that determines that person's conduct and personality. Brian's overriding emotional push is self-sacrifice. He's tortured and spurred on by his concern that should the person he'd replaced come back to a still existing threat, they probably won't survive. So Brian Yi may be the most not-ever-quittingest character I've ever read. Also, he plays the oboe. Oboes are cool.Hopefully, I've drummed up interest in you and you skedaddle to your local or online book store or your Kindle device. So, it's a story that grips you and may keep you past your bed time. I absolutely loved it, didn't even mind the papercuts I developed from flippin' the flippin' pages so hurriedly. There's one glaring flaw that coursed thru the narrative. I ain't no judgy grammarian or that harsh of a stickler for proper punctuation, but, man, whoever edited this thing sucks more than the gravitational pull of a black hole. It's why I'm rating this book 4 stars, instead of the full 5. Someone needs to brush up on the proper application of "to" versus "too," "who's" versus "whose," "incidence" instead of "incident." And the comma, it is your friend. For me, PROXY was absorbing enough that I was ultimately able to never mind the poor grammar. But, man, would it cost so much to go back and re-edit the thing?