Review: Pleasant But Highly Simplistic
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 26, 2013
The plot of this book is that there is a mad man/super-villain bombing around the nation, and the president uses this as an excuse to restrict freedoms.  The main character loses her family to the bomber as a youngster and years later becomes...you guessed it, a super-hero of sorts, opposed to the mad bomber.  To do it, she has to leave the soul-mate who wants to marry her behind.The author's style is pleasant and easy to read, but the plotting is incredibly simplistic.  For example, individuals are endowed with super-strength and super-agility by virtue of turning their adrenalin "on" all the time.  Yes, adrenalin apparently allows you to dent concrete walls and jump 15 feet in the air.  I guess something like nanites was deemed too complicated.  Similarly, the pretty bank loan officer never had any sort of combat training and was described as a clutz.  But the magic of adrenalin plus a few weeks of simulations and she is basically a ninja.  I guess some version of knowledge imprinting was also deemed too complicated.While zero effort on the sci-fi end may be forgivable, this simplicity carries over to the plotting.  The coming plot twists (which are partially revealed at the end of this volume) are telegraphed early, often and hard.  The President is bad.  The head of the un-named program that trains super-heroes to fight the mad bomber is bad.  The main character just "feels it" and "knows it in her bones".  There is no dot connecting left to do -- the author is basically telling the reader that the hero program and mad bomber are a sham run by the president so that he can become a virtual dictator.  Similarly, with a more subtle touch, it wouldnt necessarily be a big deal to slip in the fact that a piece of super-hero equipment should be, but isnt, being repaired -- but when it happens here, its painfully clear that the equipment will fail in serious fashion.  This degree of foreshadowing feels like a writing flaw.The human element is also overdone in a simplistic, syrupy way.  The main character wasnt merely scarred by the loss of her family, she was broken.  She didnt merely find love, she found a "soul mate" that "completed her in ways no one else could" -- and gave him up to become a hero and try for vengence on the bomber.  The sort of over-the-top characterizations that one finds in a romance novel.While I have said a lot of negative things, the author's simple writing style is easy enough to read, and the story is harmless to pleasant.  There is a bit of charm here, such that I was able to forgive the faults to a degree and enjoy the story.  This really isnt a bad first book, and it wouldnt surprise me if Ms. Furlonburr can improve her plotting substantially in further efforts.  My rating is 2 1/2 stars, rounded up to 3.