Book review: Hero
Hero
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
This book was…underwhelming.
Perhaps I had too high expectations about it, having heard of it for years and that it was amazing and awesome and wonderful and like the quintessential YA book about a gay teenager, with superheroes! I thought it was…decent enough, but definitely not all of that. Not great, not awful, just somewhere in a really average middle with chunks that were slightly better and chunks that were slightly worse. But because I had high expectations, it feels a lot worse than just “average”. And I know Moore died fairly recently so I feel bad for sort of tearing his book apart here in this review, but it just wasn't as awesome as I had hoped.
The writing in general was really pretty sloppy. Good when it was focused on a single scene taking place in real time, but the pacing of the whole book bunched up and thinned out so that “real time” scenes happened months apart sometimes, but it was really hard to tell exactly how much time was passing in between very abrupt cuts in action, and so the book maybe took place over a year or at least many months, but it felt like a week or two, and therefore the events happening were ridiculous to actually be taking place inside that short a time frame. But the time frame was possibly realistic, but impossible to goddamn tell.
Big action scenes or anything occurring physically at all were completely underwhelming. Thom describes what he’s doing like a narrator, not a participant. It’s very cut-and-dried, “and then I did this, and then this happened, and then this” with no sense of involvement or immediacy or even excitement. Thom doesn’t seem to be feeling anything happening outside his body-no pain, scents, sounds, physical sensations; he’s not present in the world because Moore just forgets to write scenes like an actual person is first-hand experiencing the situation, and writes it like a person talking about a scenario they did not witness. Emotional parts are nailed down pretty well, but sensation/physical details and actual events and actions are just hazy and glossed over and simplified down to boring little summaries of what’s going on. It doesn’t even feel like it’s happening, because things that should be HUGE events (like Thom suddenly being ABLE TO FLY) are hidden in dry sentences of sterile, straightforward description. Anything going on IN Thom though-pain, emotions, thoughts-lots of focus on that. But I could almost never picture what was actually happening in a scene…unless Thom was playing basketball. There was relentless description about basketball.
Treatment of women wasn’t that great. Plenty of “how girly of me/that” where girly=bad, every single woman who shows up in the narrative is described wholly on their physical appearances, which are all tinted negatively-a bad perm, an ill-fitting suit, 300 pounds overweight, thinning hair. And none of them are very pleasant in personality either, except very young female children. Warrior Woman (the cheapest knock-off of Wonder Woman ever) is described constantly as a bitch, and never really gets a reprieve from that by other characters or her own actions. Thom’s mother is kind of a bad person in general, who’s motives for what she’s done are completely unclear and never really resolved. Ruth, who is generally portrayed in a positive light, dies. Scarlett is so over the top and one-note that she’s kind of a caricature, until she explains her backstory, and then some of her behavior make sense, and then RANDOM PREGNANCY!? I don’t know. I ended up liking her a lot and she was probably the best-developed character after Hal (and Thom, but that’s only because we’re sitting in Thom’s head the whole time) but I really didn’t get what was going on with that ending of her story.
I really wanted more about Goran too. Despite the fact that I partially liked how his and Thom’s relationship sort of developed “off-screen”, and every time another scene with them cropped up they had a closer natural dynamic and that it wasn’t a huge huge plot-derailing aspect that overtook the story…I still just wanted more on Goran. He seemed really interesting-his background, how he supported his brother, DID HE ACTUALLY HAVE POWERS or was he a guy like Hal, and if the former then WHAT WERE THEY, had he been “Dark Hero” (god don’t even get me started on how fucking stupid all the superhero names were) before he met Thom or was it a new thing, why WAS he running around being a hero if he didn’t have powers, etc…..the way he was presented it seemed plot convenient rather than character-appropriate.
Also it was kind of a case of stalking=love, which I never even got the point of including because there’s no ¬¬¬results from it. Goran follows Thom around a lot in his Dark Hero guise but always where Thom can’t really see him (except he sees his cape disappearing around corners about six goddamn times) but it never LEADS to anything-like he helps him out at a critical moment or witnesses something crucial (like, he actually could have backed up Thom’s story about being with Ssnake, because clearly HE WAS THERE, but it was pointed out he was there and then….nothing? IDK? Even that entire bit with Ssnake was never followed up on and you have no idea if the guy went free or went to jail or what happened to him and Thom didn’t seem to care either-it was basically an excuse for Thom to come out to basically the entire world, and Ssnake never showed up in the story again and Thom never had to clarify his story or anything). Goran just kind of creepily stalks him around. I mean, he doesn’t DO anything creepy, but….yeah, I’m just getting SO SICK OF THIS TROPE. IT’S. NOT. CUTE.
I mean maybe after the bus incident (which goddamn was SO badly written, how did Thom know the names of the villains who showed up? He literally says he does not recognize them and has never seen them before and then proceeds to call them all by their villain aliases) Goran just wanted to watch out for him or something? But since it’s unclear if Goran even has powers and Thom clearly does…and prior to that episode Thom had actually helped GORAN out a lot when his leg was ridiculously broken…that doesn’t even make sense logically. Thom should have been looking out for Goran, if anything. Also how did Thom know Goran was from Croatia? I mean, maybe Goran told him at one point but it was never “on screen”, so the audience doesn’t know, but suddenly Thom does. There were a lot of things that happened like that. I thought originally it was going to be another side-power Thom had along with healing, that he could sort of mind-read or just know facts about people (like the villains’ names on the bus, for instance) but NOPE that is not what was going on. So it was just…weird errors?
Also what was the point about Goran playing basketball with the one kid who Thom hated? When that scene happened Thom feels all betrayed and he and Goran kind of have a falling out and then Goran shows up later to apologize but this is after Thom kind of pettily got back at him in a perfectly accurate teenager way, so I never felt like they actually made up or even talked about what was even going ON there in that scene? I kind of felt like half this book was cut in edits, but payoffs/revelations/repercussions of the cut scenes were left in anyway. So you have these things that come up that seem like they were never resolved but people ACT like they were resolved.
There was a very weird underlying message in this book that seemed to be “if you think you’ve got it hard, SHUT THE FUCK UP BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE HAS IT WORSE, you are not ALLOWED to feel sorry for yourself, EVER, SHAME ON YOU for even thinking about complaining.” Because basically everyone tells Thom to quit thinking he has a tough situation, and then tells him how WORSE their lives (or someone else’s) are and how selfish and awful he is for not realizing that (although it would have been kind of impossible for him to guess these situations without being EXPLICITLY TOLD ABOUT THEM, because most people were pointedly HIDING THEM, sometimes specifically only from Thom-like his dad with his job). This is a fucking stupid message. Everyone’s difficulties are relevant to themselves; if it’s a hard situation for you, it is a hard situation for you. It’s not rendered irrelevant or “less hard” just because someone else is in a worse situation. It’s not like you have to win the “most unhappy and underprivileged person in existence” award to be able to feel like you’re in a bad situation or emotionally wiped out or upset or being unable to handle the things happening to/around you. It’s good to recognize and understand that you’re very likely not the most put-upon person on the planet, but to then cast off and devalue your own ¬¬ problems because they aren’t as bad as someone else’s is just stupid.
Thom’s fears are perfectly relevant as well. His fears about his father finding out about his involvement with the League, when Thom knows perfectly well his father is on very bad terms with them and the entire idea of superheroes, his fears about people finding out he’s gay, because when they do there’s huge blowback-not just for himself, but it also affects his father in a way Thom couldn’t have even predicted or known about. It’s not like his fears are petty teenager issues that won’t matter after a few years-the things he’s tackling are things that are always going to matter, because he’s always going to have superpowers and he’s always going to be gay, so he has to figure out a strategy to deal with these things for the long-term. There’s nothing wrong with trying to handle your issues or even feeling overwhelmed by them at points! But the message I got from this book was, SHAMMMMMEEEEE. You don’t have it hard! OTHER PEOPLE HAVE IT WORSE.
And it’s not like Thom wasn’t altruistic either. He tutored kids in his spare time (of which he had nearly none, and he still managed it), held down two jobs to help his dad with the bills, and wanted to join a superhero league to help people and ultimately his entire superpower is about helping/healing others. And yet other people are going around telling him how selfish he is by not seeing how everyone else is hurting and how he should be fixing them. This is when the guy barely knows anything about how his powers work. It just seemed really weird to me. Maybe, because this is a YA book generally aimed at teenagers, the message was actually not really aimed at Thom and was actually meant for readers, because teenagers tend to be very self-centered and selfish and that’s just how things are, but getting reminded to think outside of themselves isn’t that bad of a thing and maybe that’s what this book was sort of attempting to do? But it was just super heavy handed and was not necessary for Thom, at all. It made all the other characters kind of look like assholes. Because Thom wasn’t really an asshole, he was just a teenager, and he was a pretty okay one at that. Like sure, he had immature moments, but you could see where they came from and why-when he acted out it was from frustration and thoughtlessness and just hitting a point of too much stress, not any maliciousness or calculated cruelty. So you have Thom privately thinking “gosh this is hard for me right now” and someone swooping in out of left field going “NO! ASSHOLE! YOU CAN’T FEEL BAD FOR YOURSELF BECAUSE YOUR SITUATION IS BETTER THAN SO AND SO’S AND YOU ARE AWFUL FOR NOT HELPING THEM.” Like seriously everybody had a pointed sob story that they told to Thom-Ruth, Scarlett, Thom’s mother, Goran, sort of Hal’s dad although Thom sees (most of) it rather than gets told it; people would just spill huge paragraphs of tragic backstory all over him to make it seem like his problems were less “real” or less significant, and then make him feel guilty for thinking about himself. It just BUGGED ME. Because it happened pretty constantly.
Random note: You know what I thought would have been neat was if Thom ended up being the only person who could touch Typhoid Larry, because he’d be immune and/or instantly heal from any disease Larry passed to him, and then THEY had a relationship. Because obviously Larry would be completely unable to touch anybody, EVER, without making them sick? So he’s basically Rogue. I just thought…that would have been interesting. Or at least that they would end up better friends than they did. But for some reason Larry still did make Thom sick, it just…took a little bit longer? IDK what was even going on with that, honestly. Just another dropped plot thing.
I had severe problems with the superheroes and the world-building in general in this book. Justice was basically Superman. A translucently thin ripoff of Superman. He was an alien shot to earth in a rocket when his home planet was destroyed. He was found and raised by an elderly couple. His powers were flying and super-strength and super-speed and sort of laser-beam vision. His weakness was basically purple kryptonite. Like, try harder. Seriously. It wasn’t even a cute parallel. It was just a blatant plagiarism that felt lazy and unoriginal. Like Moore really couldn’t be bothered to come up with something better, so he used a completely iconic character in a slightly different packaging. Also, Warrior Woman was Wonder Woman. Her weapon was a lariat and she came from some other planet(?)/place that was entirely women. I think Galaxy Guy and Girl were the Wonder Twins. Right Wing (WHAT KIND OF NAME IS THAT JEEEEEEZUS HE SOUNDS LIKE A SUPER-REPUBLICAN) was Robin and/or Nightwing-he and Major Might and Captain Victory (look, really, these are the names, I am not making these fucking things up) kind of rotated around in a situation alike to Batman and all the Robins (although Captain Victory worked at a newspaper, so he had the Superman cover job instead of the actual knock-off Superman character). Basically think of any iconic DC superhero and they were somehow mashed into this book in a sloppy amalgam of traits and backstory. Again, it really was not cute. It was kind of embarrassing .
The only thing I thought was KIND OF neat was that The Spectrum (he could do shit with rainbows or something) was named Roy G. Biv. I mean, it’s not like super original or clever but at least it’s more subtle than all the other fucking superheroes in the story. And that’s kind of saying something, that that’s subtle.
The problem with the world-building is that it didn’t take into account what would happen if a whole bunch of people had super-powers. Also aliens exist and the world has to deal with that too, because they keep attacking Earth, but it was almost treated as NBD and regular normie people didn’t seem to conduct their lives in any special way that would have been affected by the knowledge of aliens and the existence of (apparently buttloads) of people running around with crazy-ass abilities. Almost any superhero story involves some kind of issue about people having powers and how “normal” people feel the need to protect themselves from what is almost always viewed as a threat. Why wasn’t there at least some kind of database on known people with powers because YOU KNOW THERE WOULD BE ONE, or there would be at least be a big political fight about establishing one (like the mutant registration in X-men, like what happens in the Civil War arc in Avengers, who watches the Watchmen; this stuff is important and relevant, dammit, and when you leave it out your world feels fake. Thom could have even just thrown in a couple of lines, one he realizes that he’s got superpowers, about how this means he’ll have to register with some agency or something, and then he could have spent time worrying about that because maybe that list is publically accessible and so everyone could technically know about him having abilities-like, his dad could find out if he just looked at the list-but not necessarily would, so Thom would have this sense of paranoia about who knew about his abilities, since he’d never be sure. Gosh wouldn’t that have been an effective way to deal with some world-building and also a little bit more of the feelings of being a closeted person? Also, especially after Justice went fucking crazy and tried to destroy the world and mind-controlled ALL SUPERHEROES INTO HELPING HIM….You KNOW there’s be a huge fucking backlash against superheroes. Like in the Incredibles. I mean COME ON, almost EVERY superhero story deals with that as an element and this book just fucking forgot about it. I don’t even buy the excuse that it’s a YA book and therefore doesn’t need that level of detail and/or realism because dumbing down shit to cater to younger audiences is unacceptable and I don’t even like YA.
I also feel like this book didn’t know what it really wanted to be about, so it spread itself too thin didn’t concentrate on anything enough to really make it shine. Book about gay teenager, it sort of had that covered the best actually. These scenes where Thom is hanging around the gay bar and unable to go in and all his resulting thoughts about it were pretty realistic I thought, and just his scattered fears and worries and opinions and everything that came up were all the most effective parts of the story. The scene with Simon where Thom gets his first kiss and then basically has a really awkward experience in a situation that is expected to lead to sex but never does was probably the best and most realistic and believable scene in the entire book.
But as a book about superheroes…not even close. This was a TERRIBLE superhero story. The League and the probationary teams made no sense (why were they looking for new teams? Were they going to JOIN the League? Be a separate team?) and WHO WOULD EVEN ARRANGE SHIT LIKE THAT, throwing these untrained people with wildly varied and incompatible skill sets into dangerous situations with absolutely no training and you’d think that as a minor Thom would have needed his dad to sign some sort of LEGAL DOCUMENTS because he was constantly endangering his LIFE on behalf of this (apparently completely sanctioned) organization ugh the rules and the world presented made nooooo sennnnnse; as I’ve mentioned the established superheroes were pale imitations and replicas of superheroes we already have, no pretty much no originality to them except what if Superman basically ended up not LIKING humanity and turned evil. That in itself has already been explored would actually be interesting but damn, it wasn’t here.
And the book didn’t even take advantage of the natural parallels between having a secret identity/being closeted. YOU’D THINK THAT WOULD AT LEAST POP UP SOMEWHERE. But I guess X-men (the movies anyway) really got that covered. Maybe it was trying to make a parallel without actually making a parallel, by having this story about a gay kid worrying about being outed and a kid having to deal with a secret identity that no one can find out about, and the audience is supposed to draw their own ideas about the similarities between those two ideas. Because the book sure wasn’t going to do it.
But then again, that doesn’t even work, because Tom didn’t even have a secret identity. After the wetsuit thing he’s never mentioned to be wearing a costume, a mask, anything at all other than regular clothes, and he never had an alias and never even tried to create one and in fact just always goes by ‘Thom’, so even that doesn’t work as an unstated parallel. Because Thom is completely “out” about his powers, except that he’s just not telling his dad, but he’s pretty much fine with using his own name and his own face and running around doing his healing stuff where everyone can see him. But he doesn’t tell anybody he’s gay and he keeps that very shut up and secretive, so…I don’t even know. It was just inconsistent and I really thought it was a missed thing to at least have a stronger an obvious connection between closeted/secret identity. And it was kind of ridiculous that his dad was so against everything Thom was-obvious homophobe and super biased against people with powers.
What this ended up being was a kind of a book about a father and a son, since the relationship between Hal and Thom kind of drives everything else-it’s an underlying factor is just about everything Thom does, it somehow relates to or challenges or supports his father. And there is actually SORT OF an emotional resolution with it-a very weird rushed one (and uh so is Thom gonna like…be an emancipated teen now? Go into foster care? is he old enough to live alone? What will he do for money? I guess he has jobs, but-QUESTIONS JESUS this book ended so unresolved and instead it choose to do a fluffy thing about Thom and Goran sort of hooking up I guess) and really only part of it is about the gay thing-part of it is also about the superhero thing.
Overall out of 5 points each, treatment of women get a 2 rating, characters overall get a 3, world-building gets about a 3, plot gets about a 2, LGBT-friendliness gets about a 4, overall execution (writing, pacing, etc) gets about a 2.5. Which is about a 3 average. Which is what I rated it. Funny how this system is working out pretty well.