by April Daniels
rating: ☆☆☆
published: 24th January 2017
spoilers? little ones
Goodreads
Galley provided by publisher
Before I actually review this book, I gotta say I did actually like it, despite what my review may say. The characters were great, if kind of black and white in their good/badness despite the greycapes who were clearly an attempt at having some morally ambiguous characters thrown in there (spoiler alert: they aren't all that morally ambiguous). The world was interesting, even though the world building was poor to non-existent. Overall, it's good.
The biggest problem I had was with the worldbuilding. From early on, it's pretty clear the author hasn't put all that much thought into things like "hypertech". There's the whole nobody really knows what makes hypertech possible comment, which, I can't believe. If there have been superheroes, and presumably hypertech, around since World War 2, I find it hard to believe that there's been no advance whatsoever on what makes this hypertech possible. I mean, just consider the advancements physics in general made in approximately the same timespan. And if this is supposed to be a futuristic society (which I assume it is, based on some of the made up physics that comes up - yes, it's a bugbear), then they should have some idea of what's behind it.
So there's that, and then there's the aforementioned made up physics. I feel like I should point out at this stage that I have a serious problem with books which bullshit their physics (see Claudia Gray's Firebird trilogy). Because if you're going to create something that isn't physics as it is now, then you could at least make it believable. And to do that, you have to not half-arse the physics you're basing it on. I mean, at one point Doc Impossible tries to fix something with a voltmeter. A freaking voltmeter. All that can do is measure the potential difference in a circuit.
Then there's the point where a plane engine sucks in a goose. First off, what kind of mutant goose flies at the same altitude as a passenger jet/civil aircraft. If it was a mechanical aircraft of some sort, which flies a lot lower, I could believe it (Wikipedia does have a page on "bird strikes" after all). But a passenger jet? And it causes the engine to blow up. That's got to be a freak incident, because the majority of bird strikes don't actually cause any damage to anything besides the bird itself. If the engine had simply failed, that would have made more sense.
The worst part of all this make-believe physics was when someone asks Danny and Calamity to get him some non-Newtonian fluid. Now, a simple Google search will tell you what a non-Newtonian fluid is. It, surprise surprise, is a fluid which does not behave like a Newtonian fluid. (It's something to do with the relationship between shear rate and shear stress, and viscosity. Newtonian fluids show a linear relationship, while non-Newtonian fluids don't.) And Google will also helpfully tell you some non-Newtonian fluids which are common around the house, like toothpaste... and custard... and ketchup... So forgive me if I roll my eyes at this part. This "non-Newtonian fluid" they have to get hold of in order for this guy to help them, is apparently coveted enough that they have to steal it. Just no.
Then then then, there's the point where Doc Impossible describes the tower's reactor as a supercritical light water fission reactor. Which, at first, sounds like loads of words just thrown together. But supercritical water reactors and light water reactors do exist. In fact, a supercritical water reactor is just a type of light water reactor. And, currently, and presumably also in this world because it hasn't been said otherwise, fission is the only viable source of nuclear energy. So why throw all these words together when half of them are redundant? All I'm getting is that the author wants it to seem like they know what they're talking about when they actually don't.
Finally, there's the quantum instabilities triggered by observer effects. All observer effects are is the changes that will be seen in the phenomenon observed depending on how the observer is viewing it. Nothing more. Nothing that could cause any "quantum instabilities". Get your shoddy physics out of here.
In addition to the world building problems, there was the issue with the superheroes I had. For one, they are basically direct ripoffs of Marvel and DC superheroes some of them. I mean, I get there's a finite number of superpowers and combinations of superpowers but you could try to be more creative. There's a character who has the exact same backstory as Eli Bradley (Patriot) for crying out loud. Right down to the hereditariness of the power. It's also clear that Dreadnought is a Superman-substitute and Valkyrja is basically Thor (she's a mythical goddess and talks very similarly to him, though she doesn't have a hammer). There's a mention of a hero called Darkfist early on too, and he's basically the Batman/Iron Man character.
There's also a part where a guy walks into the bar Danny and Calamity are staking out, and Calamity immediately knows he's the guy who can lead them to the bad guy. By looking at him. But at that point, I gave up questioning it, because it was 70% through and very little was happening.
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