Black and White (Icarus Project, Book 1) Paperback – June 2, 2009

I purchased the book for my Kindle, and I am extremely satisfied with the selection. I am a fan of the superheroic genre despite the fact that I have not bought a comic book (other than the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volumes) in some time. I think that there are a lot of good tales to be told in this genre, and this is certainly one of them.

In fact, Black & White ranks right up with Grossman's Soon I will Be Invincible, another book that I think has done a marvelous job of representing good superheroic storytelling. The two share many similarities, such as the fact that they both use flashback "origin stories" as well as a "something going on in the here and now" plot, and the fact that they both alternate between hero & villain. But they are hardly the same book, because these are structural elements. The heart of the two -- characters, situation and setting -- are very different. These essential elements (in both books) make them both excellent stories in general and fine examples of how well a superhero book can be done.

I thought that the pacing was excellent. The author's "Then" and "Now" device undergirds the back-and-forth of the two characters and helps drive the story forward. While the same back-and-forth storytelling device was used in Soon I will Be Invincible, and the differences are noteworthy. There I was enamored of one side of the story (Dr. Impossible of course) and not-so-well connected to the other side. I understand why it was necessary: too much Impossible will spoil the soup, and the over-the-top villain had to be balanced out by the stalwart hero. In Black and White, these very different characters are both compelling to read and held my interest equally. It is not a matter of 'better' or 'worse' though, the technique needs to conform to the tale, and in both does. The characters here have a different dynamic and so -- like SIWBI -- the back-and-forth technique as applied was perfectly suited to the story. The various main supporting characters were extremely well done, both unique and interesting without going into tangents or derailing the main characters and their stories.

Beyond that structural issue, the dialogue/character/setting content was excellent. The dialogue was rapid-fire and did a good job of establishing their character's motives both externally and internally. The characterizations themselves are not only consistent but realistic within the framework of the setting material. In a way, this is even more important in a superheroic book than a non-superheroic book: cardboard cut-out characters are an anathema in Superhero fiction because that only feeds the stereotype (unless, like 'Jason' from SIWBI that *is* the point). The Plot well done, with one or two quibbles I won't belabor here because these certainly do not detract from an excellent read.

Excellent work from the authors, I look forward to more.

FOR THE KINDLE: No annoying formatting mistakes! It is really nice to see a book in Kindle version which is well-formatted. Kudos to whomever "kindle-ized" this book with one little problem: the Chapters were not "pre-notched" or Bookmarked. Navigating my way to where I need to (should I try to find a particular passage) is going to be a problem. I started Bookmarking myself as I went along, but as I got into the story I stopped: the Kindle "became invisible" which is the stated goal by Amazon, so that is no complaint. I think that also speaks highly of the story but will make going back that much harder. There was also no Table of Contents, which is the other alternative to Bookmarks in overall navigation. Still and I think this bears repeating: No mistakes! And the formatting was the most important thing to do in helping the reader 'get' the story -- if one thing needed to be done right, that was most certainly "it".

Superhero books are a strange breed. They tend to either embrace the absurdity of their premise and aim for a wild and over-the-top style that is intended to make up for in quantity and variety what they lack in depth or they go the Watchmen/Dark Knight route and aim for a gritty, personal experience steeped in pathos.

There are elements of both in Black and White. Most of the book is relatively light and doesn't delve too deeply into the darker aspects of the world Jet and Iridium live in. There are some darker parts to the story - such as when one of the teenage heroes is killed during a supposedly routine training patrol.

Most of the novel, however, is focused on the relationship and history between the two main characters. The now-and-then alternating character style of story telling works fairly well in keeping the now part of the story moving while filling in the back story of how things ended up as they are.

One of the problems with the novel is that only one of the stories is interesting. Iridium is by far the more believable of the two characters and, to be honest, much more likeable than Jet. Granted, there is an in-story explanation for why that is but since that isn't revealed until late in the story it makes the preceding chapters told from Jet's point of view a long, hard slog. That's unfortunate because some of the glimpses into her personality during her days at the academy revealed someone that would have been a fun and engaging character struggling with the darker aspects of her gift. Instead we got RoboCop with darkness powers instead of armor and a gun.

One of the other reviews said the novel had elements of 'Harry Potter' in it. I have to agree in that the students are divided into categories based on their powers. This felt a lot like the different Houses in the Potter series. More importantly, this had the unfortunate effect of diminishing the uniqueness of the characters. Jet was Darkness Hero #57 and Iridium was Light Hero #68. They didn't seem special in and of themselves. It robbed them of uniqueness.

Finally, although a decidedly minor nit-pick, the use of certain expletives (Christo!) and religious references was something that detracted from the narrative. It just didn't feel organic to the characters. It felt like a safe cop-out for what would have been a curse word from a real person.

Those issues aren't fatal for the book but they did drag the novel down a star or two in my opinion.