A joyous mix of comedy, action and murder.

Disclaimer: I was provided a copy of this book free of charge in exchange for an honest review.

If there's one thing we have in abundance these days, it's superheroes. Be it the goodyguy nonsense of Captain America, the Greyscale middle ground of the Suicide Squad or the failed attempts at villains like Venom, we're inundated now with so many it's easy to suffer cape-fatigue, and this is where I find myself these days.

I therefore fully expected to find this book a hard listen, as no story would truly portray a villain would it, after all we'd never cheer on the actions of a murderer. And yet..somehow C T Phipps has managed to cross the line in a way that not only gives us a likeable villain, but allows them to commit murder without is feeling guilty for applauding it.

Sure, most of the victims were villains themselves, and you could say that most had it coming and yet there is a strange conjoining of Captain America's ruleset and honour along with Deadpool's unabashed acceptance of violence as a means to an end, and equally with just as much snarky comedy. I say this as the book is fun, and not just smirk-inducinf but proper embarrassing-yourself-on-the-bus-guffaw inducing funny along with being jam-packed of cultural references that would appease any fans of Ready Player 1.

So the question remains, with my cape-fatigue, did I enjoy this and my answer is yes. It was exciting, funny, cool and brilliantly narrated by the ever-fabulous Jeffrey Kafer and it's well worth your time.

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1 person found this helpful

Comically clichéd

This book trips out tropes like they're going out of fashion but then that's the foundation for the main premise of the series. Now some folk may find this irksome but fortunately I wasn't one of them. The farcical plot is wonderfully tongue in cheek and pokes plenty of fun at the superhero genre. Ultimately if you're looking for a brain candy kind of book to while away the hours then this audiobook fits the bill.

Kafer's narration is ok although separating some of the character voices can be tricky. The audio quality is crisp and there is no noticeable dips in quality.

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You can’t fail but to love these books!

Pure brilliance! The books have the feel that the stories have just fallen onto the page at a rate faster than thought; they’re just overflowing with action, Wit, sarcasm and brilliant story lines. I love the fact the characters are totally self aware of how ridiculous it all is.
Jeffrey does a brilliant job narrating these books, he’s perfectly suited to the style of writing and just bats the story and characters out of the park!
I don’t think I’ll ever tire of these books!!
This is my honest opinion on a free review copy.

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4 people found this helpful

what possibly could go wrong

Very entertaining and the characters are brilliant.
I will not give spoilers. So have a go.
what could possibly go wrong

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1 person found this helpful

Excellent series

CT Phipps writes across many genres but this is by far my favourite series of his that I've read / listened to. It's an over the top comic book story with the focus on a supervillain who keeps ending up doing good. It's proper laugh out loud funny.

Get it and enjoy yourself

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3 people found this helpful

Hilarious but limited

Overall good, liked the characters but book 3 seemed to end about halfway through.

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1 person found this helpful

Poor narration

I give in. The story is just monotonous and as for the narration, I have no idea who is saying what half the time. Virtually everyone sounds exactly the same. I think I've managed to listen to about 25%, I honestly don't care enough to check.

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Meh

While the setup and world are interesting the rest falls flat. The wisecracking, pop culture spewing protagonist who gets all the girls in a story that pokes fun at the superhero genre is cliché and used by a lot of superhero story authors these days. The story starts off interesting [SPOILERS AHEAD] with the protagonist Gary getting mailed a cape that gives him superpowers and then deciding to pursue a career as a supervillain (really an anti-villain which was also a concept I really liked), from there the story drops off and becomes predictable.

Shortly after becoming a villain, he kills off several villains and an entire vigilante team, escapes the superhero's space prison and kills a couple Jewish gods then fends off a zombie apocalypse. He gets through it all by being a Gary-stu, He gets out of most situations with a combination of arguing until the other person concedes, a method that works of cosmic entities ( Gary and his entire family are also favored by death so get special treatment), the heroes and villains being pushover(he dated a few high profile super heroine's I.E Ultragoddess) who look mostly look the other way or only make a token effort to arrest him when he does something evil. Besides a few injuries and fakeout deaths, he suffers very little consequence from his actions, not even retaliation from villain's/heros he's wronged or who are out for revenge for mass killing their colleagues.

Another thing is the obsession Gary (and later other characters) with his wife, there are multiple sections where he or some other character is complimenting his wife and how great he is. She becomes the focus of the plot after becoming a vampire and Gary's obsession with turning her back which eventually becomes moot in the third book which focuses on ramping up the liberal politics and nazi comparisons. All in all I probably wont be picking up the next books in the series.

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