Customer Reviews

Shades of Gray (Icarus Project, Book 2)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Fans of Black and White will love this engaging sequel, Shades of Gray.

Shades of Gray helps answer many of the questions proposed in Black and White. This is sensational for fans of Black and White who were left with many questions at the end of the first book. Because of this readers who haven't read Black and White should do so before trying to read Shades of Gray if they want to understand what's going on.

Like Black and White Kittredge and Kessler have done an amazing job creating the world of New Chicago and its multidimensional characters. Jet and Iridium are amazingly well written and fans of the series really will get to see what makes each of them tick in this new book.

One of my favorite parts of Shades of Gray were the inter chapters where you get to see the past and what the old heroes were like. It was really interesting to watch the transition between hero and villain and what when through Archlight's and Night's minds. But even more impressive than that was the way everything was so eloquently pieced together. From the introduction of the new heroes, to the tidbits from the journal before each chapter, to the alternation between characters in the past and present. All of it was done beautifully and Kittredge and Kessler really outdid themselves when creating this book.

My only complaint was that it's not over. The mysteries are not all solved and there's even more questions now. But it was well written, filled with great action sequences, and an incredibly engaging book. All in all a must read for any fan of superheroes or anyone just looking for an engaging science fiction/fantasy book.

[...]

In New Chicago, Jet and Iridium know their relationship is still changing. Once the pair was the best friends forever; soon afterward they became the best of enemies forever; recently out of desperation they teamed up to defeat the Night (see Black and White) though each believes this changes nothing between them.

However an unintended consequence of their victory over the rogue superhero is in destroying the brainwashing transmitting gizmo that controlled Squadron loyalty has posed a new threat. With no one pledged to Corps-Co any longer since the transmitter failure, the Squadron members are outraged, divided and confused. Extrahumans wants revenge while normal humans are turning catatonic as an old enemy of superheroes Everyman has surfaced with vengeance in mind. While Doctor Hypnotic has escaped incarceration using his mesmerizing power to cause further mayhem for everyone especially the former BFFs who still want to remain on the side of the law though that is increasingly turning impossible as their former allies, their enemies, even a dad, and the humans they pledge to protect are after them.

This is a great work of speculative fiction that rotates past and present through the viewpoints of various characters. Fast-paced with plenty of action as seemingly everyone residing in New Chicago wants to either kill or ate least kick the butts of Jet and Iridium. With a nod to The Watchmen, fans will relish the second Kessler-Kittredge superb superhero world as the heroines learn an inconvenient truth about the past and unintentional second and third order effects.

Harriet Klausner

When I received this book as an ARC I was thrilled and nearly out of my mind with joy. I totally adored the first book, Black & White and I couldn't wait to read this one. I completely lost the memory of any other books and jumped head first into the world of superheroes and supervillians again
I will try to keep this review spoiler free but it will probably contain a few spoilers from book one, so stop reading if you haven't read that one. You should go to a bookstore and redeem this mistake. *wink*

The first thing I really loved about this book is the, for lack of a better word, organization. You've heard me bitch about some books with multiple POVs and now I tell you that's the thing I adored in this book. Each chapter has the name of the hero it's about at the start and I never felt lost. Again we also have the NOW and THEN parts and I was so happy to get a glimpse at Arclights and Nights background. We also get a new part in Shades of Gray: between the NOW and THEN parts are interludes. I won't tell you anything about them just that OMG I hope we get more about them. Cryptic much? I know.

The NOW chapters are all about Jet and Iridium again. We see what happens after the Fall of Night and the destruction of the Corp Co commlinks system. The superheroes are free, more or less, and the reaction to this varies extremely. Jet and a few fellow heroes try to get the mess sorted out but they are just not enough to go against the uprising rabids. This is Jet's chance to show them what she's really made of. I liked Jet more in this book. I can't even say why, but she didn't seem as pitiful in this book. I learned to understand her more and I really wanted everything to work out for her.

I still adore Iridium with her witty and bitching comments. She made me laugh so much. I was happy to see that at least some good thing happen to her too.

The THEN chapters are centered around the life of Jet's and Iridium's parents and how life as a superhero was at that time. We see how their relationships develop and how it all became so messy. I have to admit, at some points I was screaming and raving at the characters. I told them: No, don't do that and OMG why would you do that? but unfortunately they ignored me. I have to work on my changing the past skills. I enjoyed the unique voices of Vixen, Luster (that's Arclight's original superhero name), Blackout, Angelica and Night. The resemblance between children and parents was wonderfully handled. I got attached to these characters really fast and it pained me so much more to see what happens to them.

The plot in this novel is fast paced and will keep you at the edge of your seat. It makes you want to strangle the authors when they switch to THEN although you just have to know what happens next in the NOW parts but after reading the unwanted part you want to know what happens there. You will feel like you have a little shadow power with voices in your head, too. One surprising thing: I would have never thought that this book would make me cry, but it did. It is heart wrenching from time to time.

I noticed one thing in Shade of Gray that confused me a bit. The names of all the heroes. At times I was totally sure that this one hero is a man cuz the name is a male one and then bang it's a woman. Or is Kai a female name? In Germany, only boys are called that.

All in all Shade of Gray is an excellent hero story with wonderful characters and a story that will break your heart. Fast paced from the start, it will never let your attention shift to something else. Ms. Kittredge & Ms. Kessler really have super writing powers. Recommended to everyone who at least still remembers his or her love for superheroes.

Shades of Gray picks up and continues on from Black and White. After revealing the academy has been using mind control on all the super heroes, Iridium and Jet hope to stop them once and for all. Now that the super heroes are no longer under the control of the academy, things are a bit chaotic. Some of the super heroes did not like learning that they were puppets and have taken to vandalism and a life of crime. Others like Jet are still super heroes. Iridium and Jet will have to band together to stop the villains from taking over New Chicago. As well as stay out of the clutches of the academy.

Shades of Grey is just as awesome as Black and White. I couldn't get enough of this book. I read it in one day. These books need to be made into either movies or television series. This book featured more super heroes and villains. It was nice to get to learn more about Jet and Iridium before they became who they are today. Not to give anything away but I hope to see Jet and Iridium battle it out some more. Shades of Grey is gold!

Shades of Grey improves upon Black & White in nearly every way. The plot is better, better told, and much tighter than the first book. The problems with Jet's character in the first book are largely gone and her parts of the book are almost on par with Iridium's segments. If you liked the first book, I think you'll like the second at least as much.

Other reviews have covered the plot in detail so I'll just summarize it:

Jet, Iridium, and their allies are dealing with the fallout from the destruction of Corp-Co's mind-control system while also trying to deal with the escape of a powerful enemy from their parent's generation. Heroes, (former) Villains, and their human allies must band together to save New Chicago from their rabid/rogue brethren as well as from threats to extrahumans from the Every Man group. Additionally, a group of previously unknown minor powers contemplates entering the arena to help defend New Chicago from all threats. As if that weren't enough, Corp-Co has negotiated with an independent extrahuman group, Squadron: India, to come in and restore order. Will they be an additional threat for the protagonists to deal with or welcome allies in a common cause? A background to all of this are the Then chapters detailing the lives of the parents of Jet and Iridium as well as their contemporaries, Night and Doctor Hypnotic. It seems that Jet and Iridium's generation weren't the only ones manipulated by Corp-Co.

This leaves the authors with a lot of things to juggle simultaneously but for the most part they handle it well. The downside to having this many different plots to service is that the book doesn't have a lot of time to spend with any single one of them. The Latent Talent network gets the shortest shrift of all and probably should have been excised in favor of putting those pages towards the Now portion of the Jet/Iridium segments. Perhaps the author's are using that as a setup for the next book in the series in which case this was a necessary evil.

The single largest and most glaring fault in Shades of Grey lies with a device that was a problem in the first book as well. The authors chose to do a few word replacements/evolutions to symbolize the change in times and culture - words like 'digichips', 'Light', 'Christo', and 'Jehovah', amongst others. The most prominent and jarring ones are the use of 'Christo' and 'Jehovah'. You would have gotten absolutely hammered in Black & White if you played a drinking game with those. In Shades of Grey, you'd have gotten acute alcohol poisoning. The problem isn't with the words themselves - although I seriously doubt a priest wouldn't have used 'Christo', as one does during an interview segment. Instead, the problem lies with their ubiquity. EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER uses them. No culture's slang is so monolithic that every person is going to use the same slang in the same way with the same frequency. I could have bought into the evolution in language if there had been some variance, some individuality in the nature of each character's slang usage. This is especially jarring in light of the presence of a Priest, a Rabbi, and an Imam during the interview segment. None of the characters are Jewish or Muslim with the slang that would entail? Really?

Finally, one last nitpick that is also on the subject of language. In my review of Black and White, I said that I felt 'Christo' and 'Jehovah' were placeholders used instead of real curse words. I now take that back. In what is otherwise a fairly PG novel, the frequency of f-bombs was a bit out of place. Again, although a common and favored expletive in current society, the characters in the future apparently don't have a particularly varied or expansive obscene vocabulary because if they aren't using 'Christo' or 'Jehovah', they're going with the F word.

All that having been said, the book is better than the first novel. The novel ends on a point that allows the authors quite a bit of latitude to go in a number of directions with another sequel, if they so choose.

Just as the first book - Black and white - I really love this read! It's thrilling, it's bitter-sweet, the characters are well developed and beleivable as is the backdrop of a bladeunner style futuristic city. And while the thrilling adventure rolls on on several levels and in several time-spans we learn to know the characters a lot better, including their parents - an earlier generation of superheroes, as well as the wicked plans of Corp-Co to more or less dominating the world with the help of their puppet-on-strings-superheroes. Only in this book the strings have been cut off - with severe consequences.
This serie is up there with Watchmen when it comes to post-modern super heroe renderings!

The second installment of the Icarus Project books by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge is just as thrilling as the first. For those that have read the first book Black and White, our heroes Jet and Iridium are left dealing with the consequences of their actions in the previous book. Once again it is filled with drama and humor that is hard not to love. I would highly recommend it to anyone that liked the first one because it is as good, if not better, than Black and White which was excellent itself. By the end of Shades of Gray we are once again craving more of the world in which our two superheroines inhabit.

Really enjoyed this and the earlier book with its healthy amusing and yet realistic approach. Love both heroines and am rooting for Bruce. Cant wait for the next one? Anyone knows when it will be out?