2011; 205 pages. Full Title: “Burn Baby Burn, A Supervillain Novel”. Book 2 (out of 3) in the “Whoosh! Bam! Pow!” series. New Author? : Yes. Genre : Superheroes; Fantasy; Sci-Fi; Romance. Overall Rating : 7½*/10.
Let’s face it, being a supervillain
sucks. Royally.
Oh
sure, sometimes the baddie is more interesting than the superhero. Batman is boring compared to the Riddler or the
Penguin. Catwoman may be sexier, but in
the end, you know Batman’s going to prevail.
Spiderman never loses to Doctor Octopus, no matter how many times Doc
Ock goes up against him. Lex Luthor may
be an evil genius, but Superman always outsmarts him. Not even my favorite supervillain, the imp
from the fifth dimension, Mister Mxyzptlk, (try saying that five times real fast) has
ever overcome the Man of Steel.
The
truth is: if you’re a supervillain, you’re shafted. You may live to fight another day, but that
just means you’ll fail again. Your
motives are predestined to be bad, and the only thing you can look forward to
is a superhero arriving on the scene just in time to thwart your plans. Just once I’d like to hear someone say, “this was a fine,
fine day to be a supervillain.”
That happens in Burn Baby Burn.
What’s To Like...
In Burn Baby Burn,
the two protagonists, Pit Geek and Sunday, are both legitimate
supervillains. They rob banks and kill
cops and innocent bystanders, all in the name of destabilizing the world. Yet their underlying motives and sense of
honor aren't far from those of the three superheroes sent to bring them in,
dead or alive, and both sides’ superpowers are roughly equal.
Burn Baby Burn is the middle tale in a
three-book series. There are a couple
references to characters and events from Book 1, which I haven’t read, and I
don’t think I was missing much. The
title refers to the female protagonist, who goes by various monikers, including
Sunday,
Sunny, Sundancer, Burn Baby, and Baby Burn.
She can fly, create mini wormholes, and shoot fire out of her hands. Pit Geek can generate space warps, is
immortal, and can swallow just about anything and everything. Incredibly, the three superhero antagonists
have even greater superpowers.
A
lot of the story is set in the Carolinas, plus a brief visit to Guantanamo. You’ll also visit a newly-formed island
country called Pangea, inhabited by super-intelligent chimps. The action is fast-paced, and there are lots of neat gadgets such as the “Regeneration Ray Gun”.
I have to admit I didn’t “get” a play on words in a character’s
name, “Rex
Monday” but James Maxey explains it a bit later.
The ending was good, with lots of excitement and some keen twists that
made the resolution of the super-fighting completely unexpected to me. This is a short-&-fast read, and for me it
was a page-turner as well. It’s a
standalone story, and part of a series only to the degree that a few of the
characters might make it into the following book.
Excerpts...
“Everyone
dies. Everyone.”
“You don’t.”
“Yeah,” he
said. “I do. A little every day. You ain’t looking at a living man. You’re looking at a corpse too stupid to call
it quits.”
“You keep saying
you’re stupid,” she said, brushing her hair back from her face, “but the more I
listen to you, the more I suspect you’re secretly kind of smart.”
“That’s just my
dumbness rubbing off on you,” he said. (loc. 2014)
“You drove your
vehicle into my vehicle. You met my
attempt at telepathic communication with an act of violence. The kinetic energy of your weapon shattered
my form and lodged my components within the matrix of your nervous system.”
“Vehicle?” said
Pit. “You were driving a damn purple
elephant down a dark highway! I wouldn’t
have hit you if you’d been in something with headlights.” (loc. 3320)
Kindle Details…
Burn Baby Burn is currently priced at $2.99
at Amazon, the same as the other two books in the
series. James Maxey has a couple dozen other
“comic-book style” e-books and bundles; they range in price from free
to $4.99.
“The dung you fling at your enemy sticks beneath your own nails.” (loc. 3114 )
There
are a couple quibbles. There’s a
bunch of cussing – 18 instances in the first 20%, which is where I stopped
counting – and some “adult sexual situations”.
It makes me wonder who the target audience is. The R-rated stuff will attract adult readers,
but does it come at the cost of losing the juvenile crowd?
Of
greater concern are the typos. There
were enough of them for it to be distracting. Her/Here,
he/his, its/sits, skid/skidded, jacked/jacket, petal/pedal, etc. Plurals often included an
apostrophe, Sao Paulo changed gender to Sao Paula, the chemical acid/base
indicator is “pH”, not “ph”, and one character’s last name was “Christenson”
one time and “Christianson” the next.
Most of these are just spellchecker errors, and if there were proofreaders
involved, they should be shot.
Despite the editing issues, I enjoyed Burn
Baby Burn. It kept me interested
throughout, had lots of thrills and spills,, and James Maxey’s witty writing style fully
suits this “superhero” story. So
if you’re hankering for a return to your comic book “youth”, but are now too “adult”
to be caught doing so, Burn Baby Burn
is a perfect fit for you.
7½ Stars. We’ll close with a supervillain tip from Sunny. If your superpower happens to be bursting into flame, remember to strip first before using it. It’ll save you a ton of money for new clothing to replace what you were wearing which gets incinerated when you turn yourself into a blowtorch.
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