Review: Superheroes, Magic, Aliens, oh my!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 15, 2012
Sometimes a book is clearly a labor of love for the author.  There is the impression that the author has imagined entire life stories for the characters and has built up the locations in their mind to the point where they can take a mental stroll through the streets. This was the feeling I got while reading Starfall City.  Moore invents an alternate history universe where superheroes, aliens, demons, Atlanteans, cyborgs and more are an accepted part of daily life.The story follows Frances, the daughter of a hero turned villain, and her attempt to rescue her father who has been kidnapped by agents unknown.  As the story progresses, we are introduced to Clara, a hero who has lost her powers, Kaz, a martian artist who is more than he seems, Argent and Erin, students at a school for magic who get in way over their heads, and finally Bryce, a warrior fighting for revenge and the honor of her clan.  Each has his or her own story line which eventually intersects with Frances' quest to find her father.Arrayed against this small group are the MegaCorps - the companies founded by the major players to exploit alien technology and, almost incidentally, maintain law and order in a city where you can't swing a dead metahuman without hitting someone with superpowers or mystical abilities.  The two most powerful megacorps, Starfall Defense League and The Three, maintain an uneasy peace that rests upon the principles of mutually assured destruction.The author does a great job at establishing that this world has a history, that there were events that had occurred before the first page of the novel and that I was joining a story in progress.  They did such a good job on this that on more than one occasion I wondered if I had accidentally started with book two or three in a series.  That isn't a complaint.  I prefer that a novelist show rather than tell, that they assume that the reader is bright enough to put the pieces together and doesn't feel the need to spoon feed everything to the reader.The author also has a gift for good dialogue.  Each character has their own 'voice' that gives them a clearly distinct presence in any conversation.  For example, Clara, aka Ms. Morningstar, is wonderfully acerbic as the hero who once could melt steel with a glance and now peels strips of flesh with words.There are a few weak points in the novel, however.Some of the action scenes felt a bit off.  A well written fight scene gives the reader a good feel for spatial relationships (where everyone is, physically, in the scene) and the violence is either sudden and shocking or tension is ratcheted up slowly until it explodes in brutal, personal violence. Some of the scenes in the book were quite effective (such as when Bryce comes to Frances' rescue) but others weren't as clearly described as they might have been (especially the final epic battle.)  I never had the fear that any of the main characters weren't going to make it.Another nitpick is more of a personal pet peeve of mine.  Use of magic in many books is of the 'hand waving mumbo-jumbo' variety where there don't appear to be any actual rules for magic use.  This leads to the magic being used as a plot crutch where the characters can get out of any particular situation because one of the characters manages to get a hand loose and wiggle their fingers while mouthing 'arcane words.'  The author may have had an idea for the 'hows and whys' of magic in this universe but that wasn't clearly conveyed to the reader.Those minor quibbles aside, the book works.  The author has created a fascinating world with huge potential for exploitation in future sequels or even prequels taking us back in time to the founding of Starfall City or continuing with the adventures of Bryce and Frances or Erin and Argent.  There were a lot of questions posed in the book and few of them were answered (what is Clara exactly, why was she experimented upon, where did she come from?).  Hopefully we'll get an opportunity to find out.