Review copy provided by Tor Books.
I think the proper genre category for this book (and the other in its series, Vicious) is super-anti-hero story. The superpowers regularly at play in this plot do not in any way render their bearers heroic; quite the opposite. Here we see humanity in all its vicious, vengeful, self-centered “glory.” There is some loyalty, but mostly there is raw ambition, fear, attempts at control.
The superpowers of this universe come from the events surrounding a person’s death–provided that it doesn’t stick. These near-deaths provide a range of powers not quite the same as the standard narratives–some bulletproof heroes, certainly, but the limitation of having to relate powers to death is an interesting one, and well suited for the dark kind of story Schwab is telling.
Every element of this book feels like it would adjust so well to film, and people love superhero stories and also revenge stories, so I hope they do film it. It’s full of beautiful dresses and dark places, elegant dinners and grueling fight scenes and terrifying pseudo-medical experiments. It is very, very noir, so if you want a book with kindness and hope, this is not that book. But if you want to dig your teeth into the throat of vengeance, well, Schwab’s got that elegantly covered.
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