A world with superheroes could be a wonderful thing. With great power tends to come great responsibility, and it seems as though people with the ability to protect those in need gravitate towards such hobbies.
Los Angeles has certainly benefited from its superpowered saviors. Gorgon has a particular vendetta against the street gang calling themselves the Seventeens. Mighty Dragon has been keeping an eye on the streets as well, and Stealth seems to be keeping attacks on women in check.
And then...the virus gets loose.
In Ex-Heroes, Peter Cline combines the very popular superhero and zombie genres to create a very interesting post-apocalyptic world. Taking place one year after the outbreak began, with flashbacks to the superheroes' experiences before the crisis, a band of superheroes has made a 'safe zone' out of the old Paramount Studios lot. They go on raids outside of the walls of the Mount for supplies, but have also converted rooftops on the lot to farming land, and are fairly self-sustaining.
They're not the only humans left in LA, however. Gorgon's old enemy, the Seventeens, also have a stronghold. Unfortunately, they're not nearly as nice to their civilians as the Heroes are.
But beyond that, there's been some strange developments amongst the ex-humans. When the Heroes captured three of the Seventeens, they each attempted to kill themselves in their holding cells. And one of the one who succeeded seemed...intelligent. Instead of launching himself at the nearest warm body, it was able to converse with the Heroes, and tell them what the Seventeens had in store for them.
Peter Cline has created a fascinating world in Ex-Heroes, filled with flawed heroes. No one comes through an apocalypse without at least a bit of baggage, and through the flashbacks Cline shows us exactly where each character is coming from. Even the revelation of how the outbreak started is equal parts fascinating and heartbreaking.
Ex-Heroes leaves a huge world to explore in subsequent books, characters who have an uphill battle before them, and a satisfying conclusion.
Highs: While a bit cookie-cutter to begin with, both female characters hold their own well.
Lows: While death is inevitable in a series like this, I wish a few of the characters we lost had made it through.
Verdict: An excellent genre mash-up that satisfies fans of zombies, superheroes, and both.
Further Reading: Under a Graveyard Sky, World War Z, V Wars
The alien invaders have won. By using the serotonin paths in the brain, they are able to read our thoughts and kept one step ahead of our best military personnel. There seemed to be no way to win, as the 'human population' counter slowly ticked towards zero.
Where traditional arms have failed, a genius geneticist steps in. By radically changing the structure of both the brain and the body, she is able to create the perfect warrior for the fight against the Luyten. Fifteen feet tall. Tripedal for added speed and strength. Genius-level IQs, trained from birth on military strategy, and completely without empathy for the enemy, or each other.
They are Defenders.
Within a matter of months, the Luyten threat is neutralized. Humanity's Doomsday Clock finally stops ticking down, and there is some hope on the horizon. But now that the outside threat is gone, there's a new problem to deal with.
The problem is the Defenders. Humanity has burdened itself with a race of sociopaths who are bigger, stronger and faster than humans. Now that the war is over, they don't have anything to do.
And idle hands are the Devil's playground.
Told from many points of view - from a 'traitor' who helps a Luyten survive in the rubble of a city, to one of the scientists working in the labs that created the Defenders - this is a story of an ongoing apocalypse. Just as one threat to humanity is defeated, another emerges. Humanity will have to make alliances it never thought possible and betray its own creation in order to survive.
Will McIntosh shows his deep understanding of the human psyche, both the thoughts of the individual and those of the masses. Any book with telepathic main characters would be a challenge, but with the fractured minds of the Defenders added to the mix, the book becomes a minefield. McIntosh masterfully creates both a race that is interdependent on the emotions of its group, and a race who has no concept of these feelings at all. The contrast throughout is fascinating and addictive.
Defenders is a can't-miss for fans of near-future science fiction as well as the growing fan bas base of post-apocalyptic tales.
Highs: The way that each Defender is eerily similar, yet has separate personalities, is striking.
Lows: There were mistakes made by the world governments, over and over, that made me want to scream at the book.
Verdict: A masterful piece of science fiction that should have wide appeal.
Further Reading: A Hymn Before Battle, Fortune's Pawn, Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka Volume 1, Robopocalypse
It's amazing how life can change in an instant. Forgetting to check your blind spot while driving, or carelessly mowing the yard, can have consequences that last forever. Lightning strikes cause forest fires that decimate hundreds of acres, and tornadoes can flatten towns in a matter of minutes.
In Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life as We Knew It, Miranda is an eyewitness as one of these events happens. It's been the most talked about astronomical event in a generation: an asteroid is about to hit the moon, and it's large enough to be seen with just a normal pair of binoculars. All the new stations have been bringing astronomers on to talk about it, and Miranda's teachers have been trying to elbow moon-related topics into their lesson plans.
But no one could have expected that the astronomers would be so wrong. No one knew that the asteroid would be orders of magnitude more dense than anything they'd ever seen before. So when that huge piece of space debris hit the moon, it didn't just put on a show for the amateur stargazer. The asteroid hit with such tremendous force, in fact, that it moved the moon visibly closer.
With the increased gravitational pull of the moon on the Earth, the planet is thrown into chaos. The tides rise higher than even the worst tsunamis, literally wiping island nations off the map. Earthquakes strike areas that have weak fault lines, but haven't shaken in centuries. Satellites are disabled, and the worldwide information grid is shut down.
Underneath all of those worldwide crises, there are the day to day problems of living in a world turned on its head. Miranda is a high school girl, who lives with her mother and younger brother in northern Pennsylvania. She has most of the normal high school girl problems: a mother who pushes the schoolwork, friends who are drifting away, an ankle injury that cut short her dreams of figure skating. Like most girls, she was pretty unremarkable, and the journal that she kept only reinforced it.
But as the world crumbles around her, the journal that she's keeping becomes more and more compelling. Public utilities stop working, school is cancelled, and their well runs dry. With the lack of satellites the television quickly becomes channel after channel of emergency signals, and the radio stations soon fade out.As winter begins months early, and both food and fuel begin to run out, it will be all that the family can do to stay together and stay alive.
Unlike so many of the young adult books I've read lately, I truly like Miranda. She's far from perfect, and since it's her journal everything we see is through her eyes, but she is absolutely the most relatable character I've come across in YA in a long time. She fights with her mother over silly things, she resents both the freedoms that her older brother receives and the special treatment of her younger brother. She's a fairly capable, independent young lady, but still mourns the loss of her friends, whether physical or emotional. She worries about her father and his new family, and her sister or brother-to-be. She does the best she can in the situation that she's found herself, and few readers could honestly say they would do better.
Life as We Knew It is a refreshing take on the young adult dystopian novel, without the tired love triangles and created drama that have become hallmarks of the genre.
Highs: Watching a family try to pull together in a crisis, even when it's hard, is always uplifting.
Lows: I never like books with unreliable narrators, and a few scene might not have happened quite as Miranda writes them, but for the most part it's minimal.
Verdict: Different enough to stand out in a field flooded with dystopian fiction, LIfe as We Knew It is a wonderful, realistic look at a family in crisis.
Further Reading: The Dead and Gone, The Book Thief, Shades of Grey, Under a Graveyard Sky
