Superheroes and Comic Book Club discussion

Discuss Hero here! Put spoiler tags if there are spoilers!

I suppose I'll just repost my full review:

I found this rather bland, for the most part. I'm not keen on original superhero fiction that just throws in knock-offs of the Justice League. It feels lazy to me, especially with how often it's done. Especially since they're also usually depicted as being messed up caricatures of the Justice League. There was also something a bit unsettling about the depiction of women throughout the book - Ruth was the lone woman who didn't come across as an unlikable bitch. Yeah yeah, Scarlett got the sad backstory and all that, but even after that, she came across as an unlikable bitch. For that matter, most male characters also came across as jerkasses. There really weren't many sympathetic characters at all.

It's perhaps also worth noting that we don't actually get much answers in regard to the murder mystery in the middle of the story. We get hints about who did it, but no explanation of why. The warnings against thinking also don't really make sense, as the villain doesn't seem capable of reading minds.

Another thing that bothered me a little was the extent of the discrimination it depicted. I know that there was even less acceptance of homosexuality in 2007, but where is Thom living that practically the entire city seems to hate gay people? Again, Ruth is the one character who knows Thom's gay, and doesn't have any problem with it.

Certain story elements were pretty predictable, but it's YA literature, so that's nothing uncommon. So elements were less predictable, so it wasn't a big problem. The writing style was OK - fairly standard YA level. But nothing particularly outstanding.

I doubt there were many superhero stories starring LGBT characters back in 2007. Luckily, there are a few more now, including some that are actually enjoyable reads. This one's very much skippable.