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Two Book Reviews: Hickey of the Beast and Broken
Disclaimer: I know the author of the first book and the publisher of both.
Hickey of the Beast
This is a story about boarding school by someone who obviously attended one. It’s clever and holds together well. Remarkably clean--Kunkel dances around the issues of hookups and a lot of the more potentially-horrific issues in a neatly YA-acceptable way. It’s a hard balance to strike, making it both scary and sexy enough to interest readers but not push them away. I think she does it well. (Especially given that the author writes supernatural erotica under another pen name.)
It had originally been released as a serial novel in weekly chapters, but I wasn’t able to keep up with them and actually re-started from the beginning last month. Having briefly attempted reading serials twice now, I think I’m going to just wait for the finished book in the future. Jethrien likes them, but they’re not my thing.
Broken
Jethrien posted her review of I, Crimsonstreak a little while ago. I also read that, but didn’t both posting my thoughts because I wasn’t wild about it. This book is what I, Crimsonstreak was trying (and failing) to be. That was a middling superhero story that didn’t know what it was doing. This is a solid story that happens to involve superheroes and knows exactly what it’s doing.
While ostensibly set in the ruined US a century in the future, after we’ve fought wars with aliens and superhumans appeared and we’ve created offworld colonies; this is actually a story set in early Nazi Germany, when the death squads and concentration camps were only for the social democrats and communists. Peltan’s strategy and propaganda is classic playbook stuff; and the main characters’ struggle to escape off-world, while complicated by the sci-fi/superpower elements, is essentially that of a group of “undesirables” trying to get out of Germany in the early 1930s.
Similarly, while Broken is the title character and a lynchpin to the plot, the real protagonist is Michael Forward, who can see limited visions of the future. (“I cast Summon Plot!”) He doesn’t use his power to its full extent (even within the limitations that it has), but he’s also a teenager who was apparently badly-trained by another prescient who didn’t see his own death coming before the events of the book.
There were a lot of hints to a larger world and some kind of event or conspiracy—Broken wasn’t the only hero to lose a power, or even the only one to lose the power to fly. There’s a sequel available, Fly Into Fire, which I’m planning to read fairly soon (I should probably just go on a C&G ebook-buying binge), which will hopefully address that and a few other dangling threads.
Overall: Both were good reads, both are recommended.
Hickey of the Beast
This is a story about boarding school by someone who obviously attended one. It’s clever and holds together well. Remarkably clean--Kunkel dances around the issues of hookups and a lot of the more potentially-horrific issues in a neatly YA-acceptable way. It’s a hard balance to strike, making it both scary and sexy enough to interest readers but not push them away. I think she does it well. (Especially given that the author writes supernatural erotica under another pen name.)
It had originally been released as a serial novel in weekly chapters, but I wasn’t able to keep up with them and actually re-started from the beginning last month. Having briefly attempted reading serials twice now, I think I’m going to just wait for the finished book in the future. Jethrien likes them, but they’re not my thing.
Broken
Jethrien posted her review of I, Crimsonstreak a little while ago. I also read that, but didn’t both posting my thoughts because I wasn’t wild about it. This book is what I, Crimsonstreak was trying (and failing) to be. That was a middling superhero story that didn’t know what it was doing. This is a solid story that happens to involve superheroes and knows exactly what it’s doing.
While ostensibly set in the ruined US a century in the future, after we’ve fought wars with aliens and superhumans appeared and we’ve created offworld colonies; this is actually a story set in early Nazi Germany, when the death squads and concentration camps were only for the social democrats and communists. Peltan’s strategy and propaganda is classic playbook stuff; and the main characters’ struggle to escape off-world, while complicated by the sci-fi/superpower elements, is essentially that of a group of “undesirables” trying to get out of Germany in the early 1930s.
Similarly, while Broken is the title character and a lynchpin to the plot, the real protagonist is Michael Forward, who can see limited visions of the future. (“I cast Summon Plot!”) He doesn’t use his power to its full extent (even within the limitations that it has), but he’s also a teenager who was apparently badly-trained by another prescient who didn’t see his own death coming before the events of the book.
There were a lot of hints to a larger world and some kind of event or conspiracy—Broken wasn’t the only hero to lose a power, or even the only one to lose the power to fly. There’s a sequel available, Fly Into Fire, which I’m planning to read fairly soon (I should probably just go on a C&G ebook-buying binge), which will hopefully address that and a few other dangling threads.
Overall: Both were good reads, both are recommended.