Some
more book reviews from me. When I got the first two “Jeeves” story collections
by P. G. Woodhouse and the complete “Anne of Green Gables” collection
downloaded to my Kindle app on the PC yesterday, I was reminded I had, more or
less on a whim, also bought two novels by Richard Roberts a little while ago.
My guess is that they are geared towards teens, which would also fit with the
age of the main characters, but they were so interesting and entertaining, I
read them both yesterday, staying up longer than I had expected to.
“Please
don’t tell my parents I’m a supervillain” is the first of the two novels
centred around Penelope Akk, Claire Lutre, and Ray Viles, all 12 years old and
middle school students. Penelope, Penny for friends and family, is the daughter
of two superheroes herself and absolutely set on developing her own superpowers
yesterday by preference. In the process of building a machine that could awaken
her powers, she has her first invention ‘episode,’ coming up with a mechanic,
voice-activated centipede that serves as both tool and recycler. While her
parents expect her powers to develop slowly now, over the course of years,
Penny is set to be a hero within a year. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned.
Not only does she awake her best friend Claire’s powers (Claire’s mother is a
supervillain-turned-superhero) by accident (the serum was only supposed to make
Claire more fit for being a cheerleader), she also gives her friend Ray
superpowers with the same serum. Her first act as a superhero is to stop Ray
from trashing the science fair after Penny was disqualified, since judges didn’t
believe she had really built the Machine (the mechanic centipede), while the
school bully Marcia will win with a project she probably did nothing for
herself. Unfortunately, Marcia set the whole thing up in order to catch a
villain and Penny and Claire have to help their friend get away, while Marcia
aka Miss A tries to catch them. To make up for their first ‘supervillain’
appearance, they try to stop another young villain, who was stupid enough to
announce his first coup online, only to be pushed back into the ‘villain’ mould
by Marcia and two other heroes. Unfortunately, in the course of these endeavours,
Penny and her friends also get their names as a team (The Inscrutable Machine)
and as individuals - Bad Penny (not because Penny’s identity was revealed),
E-Claire (an alias Claire used online already and that goes well with her ‘cute’
mind manipulation powers), and Reviled (which Penny creates on a moment’s
notice, based on Ray’s full name). The only adults who learn about the
identities of the three new supervillains in town are Claire’s mother (who
doesn’t mind, as a former villain), the sometimes-villain/sometimes-hero
LucyFar (a good friend of Claire’s mother), and Spider, the former arch-enemy
of Penny’s parents. During the course of the first novel, however, Penny and
her team manage to gain the respect of the supervillains of LA (where the story
is set) and become recognized as villains themselves, with all the rules and
protections that includes.
In
“Please don’t tell my parents I blew up the moon,” school has started again and
Penny’s parents still don’t know their own daughter, now 13, is the leader of
the hottest team of young supervillains in the city, The Inscrutable Machine.
Then she and her two friends get a message from Spider for a job that will take
them to Jupiter. Penny is supposed to build a functional spaceship to
investigate a strange message from a human-sounding young girl that originated
somewhere in the vicinity of Jupiter. For this, she makes an organic spaceship
and goes on a trip with Claire and Ray. They stumble upon proof the alien race
known as “Conquerors” (whose technology Penny unknowingly copied for one
invention in the first book) has fought a battle against other aliens out in
the asteroid belt. They also find a remainder of those aliens, a biological
tissue that controls and mutates beings and objects it comes into contact with,
referred to as “Puppeteers.” They destroy a last hideout of the Puppeteers on
their way to Jupiter, picking up a partially changed human from the turn of the
twentieth century. Close to Jupiter, they meet several human colonists from the
Jupiter moons Europe, Callisto, and Io who fled Earth during World War II. And
there they are again, the supervillains who actually want to be heroes, caught
between intrigues, old enemies, monsters, aliens, and a lot of Steampunk
technology. It’s up to Penny and her team to solve it all, preferably before
the Puppeteers are replaced by monsters even better at controlling humans.
Sometimes, you just have to blow up a moon to save mankind when you’re a
supervillain.
While
both novels are nominally young adult fiction, they definitely are entertaining
for older audiences as well. Luckily, the author has avoided the typical
pitfalls of writing a story about a super-intelligent child (boy or girl alike),
which include making them too adult and too obviously above every problem.
Penny has the talent to make new stuff, but it’s only partially under her
control. And apart from the ability to make a bike out of energy, a mechanical
device that can ‘eat’ and ‘reproduce’ every kind of energy, object, or
material, Penny is a normal 12-year-old. She has not-so-favourite classes like
German (high intelligence doesn’t make a being good at everything), she gets
bullied sometimes, she has more or less normal friends, she has a crush on the
hero Mech, who is a friend of her parents. And even though she has grown up in
a household with two super-intelligent parents, her life at home is
refreshingly normal. Yes, when inspiration strikes, Penny can build
super-batteries or reproduce alien technology her father can’t understand, but
apart from that, she is a teenager with all that includes. There’s also pretty
little cliché when it comes to other people in the books. The villains aren’t
always aloof or fighting each other, they meet in Chinatown every weekend for
parties. The superheroes aren’t always heroic (Marcia and Ifrit seem more like
bullies who pretend to do it all for the greater good, Witch Hunter seems to be
in the whole hero-business only to kill) and not everyone is always good or
evil (LucyFar. who claims to be Lucifer incarnated, pretty much does as she
pleases, in a D&D game, she would be true Chaotic Neutral). The pretty girl
with the seductress for a mother (Claire, whose mother was once known as The
Minx and a villain for most of her life among the supers) doesn’t get her
mother’s ability to cloud minds with sexiness, for her it’s cuteness. And
Claire is far more of a geek than Mad Scientist Penny, both Claire and Ray are
far more into comics and superheroes than Penny is. And when the formerly-bullied
boy with the terrible parents (Ray) gets strength, speed, and endurance (and a
healthy ego boost), he doesn’t turn into the hero with the white hat, he
actually enjoys wreaking havoc far more than Claire and Penny. Emotionally very
understandable, but not how it normally goes.
The
superhuman ability of Penny’s mother to analyze data fails when it comes to her
own child, Barbara Akk, formerly known as The Audit, is always sure The
Inscrutable Machine might be a danger to her daughter, but never makes the
connection between the facts and the truth. It says a lot that the enemy of her
parents makes the connection much sooner, but the Spider proves more or less
honourable in her dealings - insofar as you can expect that from a villain (who
also isn’t human). It might also say something that of all the superheroes the
trio crosses paths with the only one realizing they are actually trying to do
the right thing is the one hero everyone fears and nobody listens to -
reanimated vampire/zombie Mourning Dove who is known to rather kill villains
she stumbles across than take them to jail.
On the whole the two novel
about Penny and her friends are a great read, not too challenging, but
definitely not simple ‘kids’ novels, either. I really enjoyed reading them and
will probably visit them again. I always like the ‘evil’ point of view and the
kids aren’t really evil, they’re just a little … misunderstood.
