Review: YA fiction excitingly crossed with the superhero genre
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 7, 2014
High school student Lydia acquires superhuman abilities when she and fellow classmate, Mark, are involved in an accident on a school excursion to a chemical plant. While Lydia is conscripted to the side of good, Mark is whisked off by the not-so-good side, where the two are inevitably involved in a thrilling confrontation.Martin has a fluid, highly polished style that is very easy to read. His characters are well-crafted and appealing. He gets into the head of his main teenage character, Lydia, and keeps us engaged in her confusions and triumphs. It is a highly accomplished novel.My one small criticism, though, is that I felt the book could have either skipped or fast-tracked certain sections to keep the pace going. We stick with Lydia as she goes on the school excursion, then stay with her the whole time in hospital, then the long flight on the plane, her exhaustive guided tour around the 'cave', and so on. Each section is done very well (nigh-impossible to fault in themselves), but I just would have preferred to skip or at least race through those bits dealing with familiar superhero tropes (i.e., discovering one's special ability, learning to control it etc) so that we got to the later, fresher aspects of the story more quickly.That said, this may say more about my personal tastes than the quality of the book, for as I stated it is fluidly told and well-constructed. My hunch, though, is that when Martin leaves readers to fill in the gaps a bit more, he will really come into his own as a writer, strengthening already formidable qualities in his work.4 out of 5 stars.