Brian Yi is a college drop-out, couch potato, and video-gamer. In his world, there are people called the Infected, who have superpowers but are afflicted with psychological drawbacks. One day Brian teleports, taking the place of a woman who is about to be murdered. The Infected thug trying to kill her beats Brian, who reappears in his apartment only for his roommate’s girlfriend to call the police, who take him away.
I love that the main character is a couch potato in the beginning of the book. He’s not good-looking, he’s overweight, he failed his over-achieving Asian parents… he’s just an average guy. His “superpower” is terrifying. He doesn’t have super-strength or anything to help him out, but he keeps getting thrown into situations where people are trying to kill him. The fact that every superpower comes with some kind of psychological disorder makes a lot of sense to me.
There are a lot of really wonderful things about this book, and a lot of flaws, too. The first part of the book was really strong, and I was going to give it a rating of 4 cupcakes, but I had to bring it down for several reasons. The first reason is the spelling and grammar mistakes. Some of them were just typos, such as using the word “grim” instead of the word “grime”. The author also makes grammatical errors, such as “your” instead of “you’re”. It kind of broke my heart. This book has so much potential! Why isn’t it proof-read properly?
The second reason is that this book is just too long-winded. There was a point when I thought the story was neatly wrapped up and coming to a close, and then I noticed I was only 26% into the book. I don’t have anything against long books, but in this case it didn’t work. There are long sections in which Brian is just working out, and he spends about half of the book in the hospital. I really like that the author includes these things, so that he doesn’t just instantly get into shape or never gets hurt, but it’s too much. This book seems like a lot of shorter stories and problems put in a row, instead of one long story arc. The author could probably split it in two or even three separate books.
With more proof-reading and some careful editing down, this could be fantastic.
This eBook is currently 99 cents!
Sami Reviews! 