Sociopath. Killer. Deviant.Monster, devoid of morals, incapable of human emotion. The villain known as Spark has been called this and more, and as a super-powered aberrant has masterminded countless crimes to build his father’s inhuman empire. Yet to professor Sean Archer, this fearsome creature is only Tobias Rutherford-antisocial graduate researcher, quiet underachiever, and a fascinating … fascinating puzzle Sean is determined to solve.
But one kiss leads to an entanglement that challenges everything Tobias knows about himself, aberrants, and his own capacity to love. When his father orders him to assassinate a senator, one misstep unravels a knot of political intrigue that places the fate of humans and aberrants alike in Tobias’s hands. As danger mounts and bodies pile higher, will Tobias succumb to his dark nature and sacrifice Sean-or will he defy his father and rise from the ashes to become a hero in a world of villains?
”more
“No gift without a price.”
Well colour me surprised, a superhero romance book that I actually enjoyed? One that’s got the kind of action I like (Wham! Pow!) with the kind of action I, er, usually don’t choose to read (no sound effects available). A strong 3.5 stars; I was confused by some of the earlier aspects of the romance and almost DNF’d, but Tobias’ narration kept me coming back and I’m glad it did.
Imagine a hybrid of X-Men and Brandon Sanderson’s Steelheart. Picture if a Vietnamese Magneto who went full on evil dictator… and happened to have a gay son. A very fatalistic, flawed, hurting son who believes it’s his duty to carry on his father’s legacy whether he wants to or not because it’s in his very DNA.
It’s a world where everyone knows mutants with super powers exist, and no one’s quite sure what to do about it. Especially as all these “aberrants” are corrupted by their powers. Tobias, aka Spark, knows for certain he’s know different. His fire-powered father subjugated vast swathes of East Asia and set up an uber dictatorship. The apple doesn’t, can’t, fall far from the tree. It’s in his nature to destroy. Tobias is currently on mission in the US, spying and sabotaging medical research into aberrant DNA, but he knows that won’t be enough for long. His father wants to make a point, and he… He wants to kill. Hiding away under the guise of a lazy grad student won’t be enough forever, not even when he can use his time to eyeball Sean Archer, the hot young professor who teaches ethics. But then a chance encounter between the two after dark leads Tobias to question what he believes, and when his father calls, he starts to wonder if he should answer.
What drew me to this book wasn’t that it was either “superhero” or “romance”, but the voice. Turns out I’m a sucker for emo kids suffering from super-powered existential crises. For reasons I can’t understand, I loved Tobias’ narration. He’s very dark, very brooding, and painfully aware of all the things that mark him as other. His character arc as he begins to question his identity and beliefs really drew me to him, and his pain over it is so well described it actually hurts.
There’s some really good writing here. I mean, really. You think indie books are all bad punctuation and truncated sentences? Nothing of the sort here. It might not be literary, but it felt grown up (and not just because of the swearing).
The superhero/supervillain story is really interestingly explored here. They run alongside both the LGBT and the racial aspect, picking up on the themes of human rights and the length (and depths) that a group might go to to get them. It’s surprisingly deep stuff, though the plot is kept simple enough that even I could follow it. I liked that the twists were well foreshadowed without being glaringly obvious. While it takes Tobias a while to work it out it’s still believable that he could have missed things, especially given his emotional state.
I wasn’t as struck on the romance, particularly early on, as it seemed like it sprang from nowhere. One minute the two are lazy student and the teacher who calls him out, the next our teacher is spilling his heart over a breakup and they’re going on a… date? It felt a bit out of the blue to me, maybe because I couldn’t get my head around their power dynamic. There’s something both interesting about it (the normally powerful son of an evil dictator has to play passive student to his teacher), and faintly creepy (sorry, teacher in a position of authority and/or power, regardless of Tobias being 25…) Sometimes Tobias seemed to take charge, other times Sean, and I didn’t quite understand. However, after the rocky start, I did believe the two had feelings for each other. I’m not a big fan of explicit sex scenes (there are a few), but I kinda liked that they bonded afterwards in a more emotional way by sharing their life experiences.
While I didn’t love it because of the strange start to the relationship, it was an emotional read. The guys are believable in the end, as is Tobias’ struggle with who and what he is. I’d recommend this one to anyone who wants something deeper and darker than you usual superhero/supervillain tale, or who likes M/M romance that’s got heart as well as heat.
-I received a free copy of this e-book in a giveaway. This does not influence my review-