Review: A Worthy Successor
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 25, 2012
Superbia is the best book I have read so far in 2012, and is my favorite among author Bernard Schaffer's ever expanding body of work. So, you can imagine my excitement when he announced plans to write a sequel, especially so soon afterward.Superbia 2 picks up right where the last one ended. Frank has accepted the torch passed down to him by Vic, and continues the fight for justice--the fight to do real police work--within a broken system overrun by corruption and pandering suck-ups. Unbeknownst to Frank, as the supporting cast begin to reveal their true colors, things are about to take a turn for the worse.Reviewing Superbia 2 is a great challenge for me. The first book was so good, and so near and dear to my heart, that I am likely letting it cast too big a shadow on its sequel. So, in fairness to this book, I must review it based upon its own merit.Bernard Schaffer, unsurprisingly, continues to grow as a writer. Superbia 2 is a beast, showcasing the advancement of Schaffer's technical writing prowess. The sentences are cleaner, the paragraphs are tighter, and there are absolutely no wasted words. Every bit of text is relevant to something or someone, and figuring out how it all fits together is part of the fun.Frank O'Ryan has evolved from the gun-shy officer he was introduced as. He now has the confidence he sorely lacked. He has shed the innocence that once guided his judgment. He is able to apply the lessons learned from the first book to become a better policeman. He drags the heavy weight of his cynicism on a chain as he ascends to the top of the mountain. In short, Frank has become Vic in almost every sense.Superbia 2 is a great story with many different plot elements being skillfully threaded into your mind like string through the eye of a needle. This is not just Frank's story. There is plenty else going on, and Schaffer should be commended for bringing Superbia's world to life in an intricate and believable fashion.However, I didn't come away from this book without a bit of criticism to offer. Superbia 2 feels incomplete somehow; like a shell of what was intended to be a much thicker story. Like it should be called "Superbia 2, Part One."I'm disappointed by the lack of a payoff to some of this book's richest storylines (Potter County in particular springs to mind). There are a lot of moving pieces here, yet the reader is provided with only minimal resolution. We see the captivating twists and turns plotted from the earliest chapters, but in the end, only Frank's story comes to a head.  I'm left feeling as though Schaffer planted all the seeds, but is waiting until Superbia 3 to harvest the crops.The original Superbia is still with me, tucked away some place safe within my mind. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It made me want to see good overcome evil. Superbia 2 didn't affect me the same way. It had Schaffer's trademark humor, but I never felt connected to it emotionally. Frank has heart, but the rest of the characters just go through the motions like robots, playing their part to advance the plot, but offering little else.Though life in Superbia has moved on without Vic Ajax, it's the reader who feels his absence more than the characters that knew him. The constant back-and-forth between Vic and Frank provided Superbia with moments of levity needed to offset the harsh reality of the work they performed. There's no one in Superbia 2 for Frank to develop a rapport with, which robbed the story of one of the original's greatest attributes.With all that said, the good still far outweighs the bad, and I sincerely hope that Schaffer finds time in his busy schedule to give us more Superbia in the near future. I'll be waiting at the bar, eager to buy Schaffer a Miller Lite. You know, the good stuff.