Review: Solid gadget hero/detective novel
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 17, 2011
Having read some of Michael Stackpoles' Battletech stuff years ago, I was pleased to see he'd written a supers novel. The novel reads almost like a Bourne style thriller/mystery. What I mean is, we very slowly throughout the book learn about who the protagonist is, what he's done and why he's only now returning to the city he'd operated in 20 years earlier. The book asks and answers questions about super hero retirement, longevity/life-expectancy and what happens when they don't know when to quit. It also speaks to the same questions for super villains.The most interesting thing about it is the way Stackpole's taken the whole super hero genre and folded it realistically into the way the media and social networking has taken over our daily lives. He makes a believable case for the eventual institutionalizing and commercializing of super heroes and their fan-base, turning them into major profit centers that the entire city's economy is based on.You wont be disappointed in this book. True, the characters are obvious dopplegangers for the major super heroes, mostly DC analogues, but then, the book is based on characters from a long running Champions game. get the deluxe version so you can read about the genesis of the main character and how it all came about.