Tag Archives: superheroes

April 10, 2013 · 6:00 am

Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines

Peter Clines

 

I bought Ex-Heroes mainly because the blurbs by other authors on the cover were so impressive:

“The Avengers meets The Walking Dead with a large order of epic served on the side… I loved it!” – Ernest Cline, author of Ready Player One

“Zombies? Check. Superheroes? Check. Awesome? Check. Ex-Heroes has it all. You’re in for a treat!” – Mira Grant, author of Feed

Those are two authors I really like, so I took their word for it. They didn’t let me down!

So basically there are some superheroes around – Stealth, Gorgon, Regenerator, Zzzap, and more. They’re kind of going around and helping out here and there, and then the zombie apocalypse hits and they get together to try to save as many people as they can. They set up a base in Los Angeles and try to protect the people there – from zombies, and from the local gang the Seventeens, who have been causing more trouble lately.

Good premise, right? Ex-Heroes wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but it was a really good, quick read. There are a few chapters sprinkled throughout the book where you get a glimpse on the superheroes’ lives before they got powers, and what they were up to before the zombies popped up. I really liked seeing each of the different heroes and seeing what kind of cool powers they had, and I liked that they all had kind of an inner-struggle thing going on. Instead of a similarity to The Avengers like Ernest Cline says above, I’d actually say it reminded me more of the Watchmen. It felt gritty, which I liked. The heroes are all normal people underneath, who are equally as distraught about the zombie apocalypse as everyone else but who feel obligated to try to save humanity – even when some of humanity includes an annoying gang trying to take over now that there’s no society.

Some big epic things were revealed near the end, so I’m really looking forward to reading the sequel Ex-Patriots, which comes out on April 23rd.

Sarah Says: 3.5 stars

 

 

 

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October 4, 2012 · 10:15 am

Costume Not Included by Matthew Hughes

 

Remember how much I gushed about the cool book called The Damned Busters? And then I went to buy the sequel and they had JUST gotten rid of it before I got there and I was so sad? Well I went and ordered it online and started reading it the same day it came in the mail, so here we are!

Costume Not Included is book 2 of the To Hell and Back series and picks up just a couple weeks after the events of the first book. (So you know, SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST BOOK, GO READ THAT ONE FIRST THEN COME BACK HERE.)

Chesney is enjoying his crime-fighting and spending time with his first girlfriend ever, Melda and life is pretty good. That is, until his mother starts harping on him to come read what her boyfriend, the Reverend Hardacre, has been writing – The Book of Chesney, in which Chesney becomes the next big prophet and helps restructure the world. Between trying to find and fight crime, telling everyone that he doesn’t want to be a prophet, and trying to keep his girlfriend and mother from tearing each other apart, Chesney has his hands full.

So, this book was still a lot of fun – but admittedly, less than the first book. There was a lot less of Xaphan, which made me sad. His 1920′s gangsta-talking ways crack me up. For instance, this scene between Chesney and him:

“Is there anything you aren’t telling me?” he said.

The enlarged weasel eyes looked at him sideways. “Yes.”

“What?”

The demon began ticking off its stubby fingers: “The median annual temperature in Timbuktu, the middle name of the guy who stocks the meat cooler at the Safeway on Route 44, the measurements of the winner and first runner-up in last year’s Miss Universe pageant, the-”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“That’s a relief,” said the fiend. “We coulda been here all night.”

 

Also, Chesney kind of lets himself fade into the background and trusts Melda to make most decisions for him. The religion subplot (that God is just an author who is constantly re-writing a book – a book in which we are all just the characters) was still unique, but started to take a confusing turn when Hardacre’s plan to turn Chesney into a prophet was added in.

Overall, this was still a really enjoyable book about good guy Chesney just trying to save the day, and I am SO excited that the third book, Hell to Pay, comes out in February the day before my birthday. I’ll obviously be buying it the day it comes out!

 

Sarah Says: 3.5 stars

 

 

 

 

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September 6, 2012 · 5:00 am

The Damned Busters by Matthew Hughes

Matthew Hughes

I LOVE it when I decide to purchase a book on  a whim, without ever hearing of the author or the books, and it turning out to be a really good book. I was browsing around Barnes and Noble a while ago and they had this book and its sequel, Costume Not Included, on one of the display racks. I read the description of the first book, The Damned Busters, and decided it sounded fun enough and bought it.

Chesney Anstruther accidentally summons a demon one night, and when he refuses to sell his soul it sets off a volatile situation in which Hell goes on strike. Bad things stop happening everywhere, which turns out to be a very bad thing. To try to get his demons back to work, Satan comes up and strikes a bargain with Chesney, which results in him having personal use of the demon Xaphan for two hours everyday to fulfill his heart’s desire: to be a crime-fighting superhero!

This book hooked me in from the very first page. Chesney is a fun character – he’s a bit of a beta male, but he’s also a numbers whiz and pretty clever – almost to a fault. He’s a nice guy though, and I liked seeing him think his way through social interactions and his crime-fighting ways. He loves his comics, and all he wants to do is be a good guy superhero and help fight bad guys. The fact that he has to team up with a demon to do this is hilarious, and I ended up really liking Xaphan – who talks like a 1920′s gangster. But it turns out fighting crime may not be as simple as Chesney was thinking…

There’s also a bit of a religious plot underneath everything that I’m really liking – obviously, since Hell is involved. I don’t want to spoil it for you because it’s a really inventive and unique idea, so you should just read it and see for yourself.

A shy guy who dresses up and fights crime, a gangster-slang talkin’ demon, tension between Heaven and Hell, various dames that may or may not need rescuing – seriously, this book has a lot of weird stuff that comes together in a pretty awesome way. I flew through this book in just a couple days, and I think I’m going to go to Barnes and Noble today to pick up the sequel*. It was THAT good. And according to the publisher’s site, the third book will be out later this year / early next year. I’m already eagerly awaiting it.

Also, I’m a little sad to see that this book doesn’t have many reviews on Amazon, so I’m purposely going to post my review there. I rarely post my reviews on Amazon, but I really think this book and author deserve the praise!

 

Sarah Says: 4 stars

 

*So I did go to Barnes & Noble to pick it up, and about 15 minutes before I got there they had just scanned that section for returns. Matthew Hughes’ books were on the returns list, so they MOS’d it and stripped off the cover. I was SO SAD. If only I had read this book a little sooner I could have saved that copy of the sequel from being destroyed. So I guess I’ll have to order it now.

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October 25, 2011 · 9:55 am

Top Ten Tuesday: Halloween Books

Good morning everybody! OMG I’ve been up since 6:30 am – weird for me on my days off, but that’s when the honeyman gets up for his new job and so (being the nice girlfriend that I am) I got up to make breakfast and such. Therefore it’s only a little after 9 and I’m already tired – made breakfast, did dishes, went grocery shopping, cleaned up the house. ANYWAYS despite my being sleepy again, this Top Ten Tuesday hosted by the lovely The Broke and The Bookish should be easy – this week’s topic is Top Ten Books To Read Around Halloween! However… this is kind of the same topic as last year around Halloween, so I’m going to TRY not to repeat.

1. Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris – Are they great writing? No. Is the True Blood TV series better? In my opinion, yes. But that doesn’t mean the books don’t make for some fun, quick reads full of vampires, werewolves, shifters, witches, maenads, and who knows what else.

2. Comanche Moon by Catherine Anderson – Conditioned as I am by years of school, I equate autumn with Native Americans. So if you’re in the mood for some romance but still want that autumn feel, try this. It was FANTASTIC, definitely one of my favorite romance novels. (Of course, autumn doesn’t really equal Halloween, but whatever.)

3. The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen – Because the main character eats a lot of candy and sweets. And because it’s a really cute book with a surprisingly dark twist.

4. The Princess Bride by William Goldman – In the words of the book itself, it has “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.” – How could you go wrong? (Watching the movie is also acceptable, because it’s just as good without all of the random author-butting-into-the-story that Goldman does.)

5. The Postmortal by Drew Magary – If dystopia is your kind of scary, then this might be good for your Halloween read. I’m reading it now and really enjoying it - basically someone found the “Cure” for age, and theoretically people could now lives for hundreds or thousands of years assuming they don’t die from violence, diseases, etc. It’s really interesting so far.

6. Comics – Because you know… people like to dress up as superheroes for Halloween. Sadly, as much as I LOVE superhero movies (X-Men movies are my JAM), I haven’t ever really delved into the comics and therefore don’t know the true stories. I really need to rectify that some day. However I do know enough to say that I am a total Marvel girl, DC sucks.

7. On A Pale Horse by Piers Anthony – I didn’t love this book, but it fits the Halloween thing kind of. A guy accidentally kills Death and therefore becomes Death himself. Antics and problems ensue.

8. Nightwatch by Sergei Lukyanenko – Again, didn’t love it. But the fantasy world created is really interesting – there’s good guys and bad guys and big epic struggles for power and such. Plus it’s in Russia, so it has that gloomy feel to it.

9. Perfect Fudge by Hazel M. Larsen – I actually really, really liked this book! There’s kidnapping and people that claim to be angels and cool stuff like that.

10. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson – OK I actually started reading this but haven’t finished it yet because I got distracted by other things. Plus I was reading it while I was sick and part of me is associating it with feeling crappy. But it did have a great spooky, pirate-y feel to it! Stevenson is actually great at creating a whole mood for a book. (Again, watching a movie is acceptable since I haven’t finished the book yet, but do remember totally loving Muppet Treasure Island.)

Holy crap I did it! I came up with ten books and didn’t repeat at all from last year’s list! Granted, some of them are a bit of a stretch but you’re not gonna tell anyone, right?  ;-) I really need to read more spooky books before next year…

~Sarah

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