A little bit of petulant teen goes a long way, but strong writing and an awesome premise recovered the fumble and carried it over the goal line.
What I gleaned about the story: In a world where government-manufactured super-heroes have replaced war and terrorism as the world’s biggest threats – and it’s source of salvation – the only thing that sucks worse than having no powers at all, is being the powerless son of the world’s greatest hero. And spending your life trapped inside his fortress of solitude. For your own protection, you understand. But petulant teen-snark is like a super power, isn’t it? Let’s find out!
Find the book on Amazon.
Kudos: This is hands down, the most original story premise I’ve seen so far in ImmerseOrDie.
Analysis: The problem is, I was a self-absorbed, whiny teen, so spending long stretches of time forced back into that head-space drains me pretty quickly. But the story kept unfolding, despite those misgivings. I did pop out of immersion a few times, but I kept diving back in, too. To see what would happen next.
And this problem of feeling oppressed by the intensity of the POV is a common one for me with 1st-person stories. The good ones find ways to break that up and pull the camera back a little, to let me breathe on my own for a bit. Fortunately, Crimson Son eventually did that, too. And once it had, there was no looking back.
Kudos: I particularly enjoyed the notion that even though history in this world chose to developing super-humans instead of atomic weapons, that didn’t free us from our own stupidities. And the major touchstones of our own violence-driven history of atrocities unfolded more or less the same as ours, but with super-heroes and villains doing all the damage instead of tanks and bombs.
Addendum: Upon reading the entire book, I found it tight throughout and was thoroughly entertained, so Crimson Son was chosen as one of the 8 books to represent ImmerseOrDie in the first IOD StoryBundle collection.
Right now my inner petulant teenager is doing an endzone dance! Kudos are due to you as well – I love the equally unique premise of this review site.
Glad to hear the tone didn’t turn you off at the start. It was a tricky balancing game and I wanted a character that started a bit immature and showed real growth by the end. I thank my expert beta readers and critiquers for helping with the balance.
Hope you enjoy the rest of the book!
Your endzone dance is well earned. And yes, Crimson Son is now on my “to read and review in full” pile. I’ll begin tackling those soon.