Review: The Rules of Supervillainy

The Rules of Supervillainy by C.T. PhippsMy rating: 3 of 5 stars

The general concept of the book is that supervillains and superheroes exist everywhere. Our protagonist styles himself as a supervillain.....named Mercilous....who purposefully only kills bad people; i.e. other supervillains. Ironic, right?

The book is written as something of a parody and something of an homage to comics/graphic novel based superheroes. It tries to be funny and occasionally succeeds. There are major doses of irony and sarcasm sprinkled throughout.

However, the constant pop-culture references detract from the world-building and the general storyline. Given the number of references to real-world events/people/culture, the lack of any reference to bigger named Marvel/DC Comics names is a bit odd.

It really took until the back half of the book before I was engaged enough to want to finish it. It was a debate until that point as to whether this was going in the DNF pile. The book was competently written with minor proof-reading/editing issues.

Review: The Girl and the Stars

The Girl and the Stars by Mark Lawrence
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a 3-star review. My experience was closer to 3.5 stars.

This book is set in Mark Lawrence's "Book of the Ancestor" series. It features a young woman, Yaz, who lives in one of several tribes that wander the nearly ice-covered world of Abeth. There was another people living on Abeth a long, long time ago. Technology allowed them to "improve" themselves and they left Abeth. New people came to Abeth to live among the ruins and build a new civilization. Since their arrival, the star that heated the world slowly died; hence the ice encroaching from the poles towards the equator of the world.

The descendants of that second group now live semi-primitive lives among the technology left behind by the first group of people. That technology seems a bit like "magic" to the remnant that is left in the ruins and/or wandering the ice.

Among the second group of people, there are four sub-groups that occasionally show up that seem to exhibit some sort of enhanced abilities. Yaz is one of those four.

Among the people living on the ice, people exhibiting behaviors from those sub-groups are removed from the general population. Specifically, they are tossed down a deep hole in the ice. Those that survive the drop do....other things.

Yaz is identified as being from the one useful sub-group and is set aside by the "priests". Her brother is identified as being from one of the other three and is dropped through the hole in the ice. Yaz, who loves her brother, dives in after him.

That is the setup and based on my reading of the "Book of the Ancestor" series, this book should be another tremendous adventure.

It fell short for a couple of reasons. The first is that we spend a lot of time in Yaz's head while she feels things. The second reason is that Yaz is inexplicably determined to save everyone. She works to save people that she's known her entire life, those she has barely met, and people that she never really met.

Yaz essentially determined that "it's all so unfair" and proceeds from there. Her interactions with others are limited to either trying to save people or emoting about the need to save people. By the end, her efforts seemed to be more self-serving than self-sacrifice.

The end of the book had some interesting plot twists. If this book connects with another reader early on, then they should stay to the end.

It didn't connect with me and I would have DNF'd this book if I had not read (6) other fantastic books written by Mark Lawrence over the last year. I'm unlikely to read the next book in this series.

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