This book has a lot of potential, but it just seems to struggle with getting to it, a bit like the main character.
This is the story of a teenager who finds out that he has super powers that have evolved from the something called the ‘neogene’. This ‘neogene’ apparently just appeared the last time Haley’s Comet flew past, were it activated the gene in a bunch of lucky people. This was a somewhat ridiculous preposition given that Haley’s has been past so many times in Human history, and never done anything (and this is not explained), and there are also so many thousands of other bodies passing us on a yearly basis, why not pick one of these?
So ignoring the implausible reason for these powers, our main character, who is a somewhat irritating teenager, suddenly finds out about his powers at the worst possible time. This happens to be whilst punching the school bully, and causing him to fly through a wall causing him grievous bodily harm. And of course, he is the son of the worst ever Super-Villain, who now wants to kill him for revenge. But, our main character is the son of a retired Superhero, one of the smartest ever to live – who previously defeated this villain, kind of convenient really…
And this unfortunately is where the story starts to decline. Our budding Superhero’s Dad offers to train and mentor him, to give him all sorts of useful advice and help him. Of course Dad, the alleged super-powered Genius has absolutely no personality or communication skills, and the way they communicate in the story is like he has not spoken to his son in the last 15yrs. He seems to go from being overly concerned about his son one second to being more worried about the cost of replacing some equipment than his son (who has just completely overreacted and smashed said equipment) the next.
The son (Kevin) on the other hand, seems to have developed the Superpower of Darwinism – wanting to do everything in his power to kill himself as quickly as possible and as stupidly as possible. The story becomes somewhat frustrating and irritating at this point as everything Dad suggests, the son does the direct opposite – deliberately and in what seems the most stupid and dangerous way possible.
The dialogue in this story is very strange at times, strained between the main characters, making the relationships seem odd, especially with Kevin and his parents. It is as if he and his parents have never met before in some places.
The relationship with the friends he has at school is equally weird, going from nothing to sharing intimate secrets in no time. The way that Kevin acts with the female his age in the book is downright weird at times (he wants to date her within 15seconds of seeing her, then wants nothing to do with her due to her hatred of Superheros, but still has a thing for her and so on…) And this girl spends her entire time with her head in her phone, like the author has never met a young female and has written her from a stereotype instead.
There is such a lack of research in this book it is very frustrating and annoying. Apart from the dialogue and the teenage girl, there are things like the scientific research such as with the testing machine made by Kevin’s Dad. There is no logic to this. Dad doesn’t believe in the ‘neogene’ but can test for superpowers? And there is no explanation for how knowing a power gives such a large increase in the percentage. In fact, there is no explanations at all about any of Genius’s gadgets.
There are a multitude of other things in this book that don’t seem right, like why is the Super-Villain Master Chaos so bad when he hasn’t really done anything other than cause a car crash? It’s like someone in the fast lane driving really slow just got a cool nickname…
HAVING SAID ALL OF THIS, I hate not finishing books, and read this entire book as always. I see a lot of potential for the story and for the characters, but this certainly needs some work in regards to the dialogue and the characters and their relationships if it is going to improve. I will have a look at part 2, mainly because of the potential and I am hoping that the author will improve and I want to see what happens to be honest. It is worth noting that this was another of the 25 day writing experiences and this may have had an impact on the quality of the book as well.
Overall, I was a bit disappointed by this as I had hoped for something better, hopefully the next book improves.