Saturday 11 July 2015

Going Through The Change

Author: Samantha Bryant
Genre: Action, Adventure, Suspense, Supernatural
Book Rating: 7
Personal Rating: 6.5

I really Wanted to love this book.  Thought I was going to hate it, then ended up wanting to read the next one.  It was a serious flip flop of opinion but it did happen.  I was admittedly thinking this book would be a no star but now I can at least give it a three.

The premise is good.  Four women going through menopause who change into supernatural beings because of a certain woman's products.  There's a lot of fun to be had here.  It's not your typical superhero fare.  One woman becomes a villain and the other three become the heroes and the race is on to catch the evil product making villain who made them this way.  Granted this isn't the most amazing plot ever, but it works for the story.  The action scenes were fun to read and the settings where easy to picture in my mind, even the characters were clearly defined.  This book was just awesome…. in the second half.  That was the problem I hit 55% or so on my reader before it got this amazing, and was completely bored to tears with the dragging plot development slow-paced blah.

The writer writes well, the introduction to all characters clearly mapped who they were out very well individualy and in context with the people in their seperate story lines.  And this was done in good time.  But after that the check list is like, background stories--check, villains and heroes clearly identified-check, character personalty types identified-check, story moving forward-no.  Pages and pages of figuring out stuff none of the characters where designed to be stupid enough not to figure out.

For example how do you live your life the same everyday, change one thing in this case a tea, start flying and never quite literaly until the third act question why you are floating.  People don't just wake up flying in the real world, something must have changed in your routien.  I don't think she ever took a step back to analise the situation and even after the person who made the special tea took interest in her situation and offered to help the lightbulb still did not go off.  I just couldn't believe she'd be that unaware of herself.  Also, how do you go from a short petit woman to an over six foot man, know exactly how it happened and not once try to rectify it.  Just 'okay I'm a man now', after over forty years of life.  If I woke up a woman yes I would go straight to my doctor to find out what the hell happened and we need to take some test lock me in a lab and lets get me back to normal imediately.  I couldn't go along for that ride either.  Two points in the book that dragged on for me and especially if you know you used to be a woman and you know why you're not anymore and this new friend flies and is clearly distraught about it, sharing would be the best to let her know she is not alone, and furthermore the tea busniess she is woefully unaware of wouldv'e been solved a good 20 or more pages faster.

The same for the best friend who becomes bullet proof.  Turning into a monster and you become your friends lab rat, your friend is a genius and yet you are still turning into a monster and it never occurs to you she is not trying to fix you.  The only person with the good sense to know what was going on was the woman with fire, she went straight to the source and willingly went forward.  The irony of that is that she ended up being the villain and just as completly psycho as our main villain.

Basically once I knew who and what the characters where about the story just went on forever as if no one was concerened at all with the fact they were changing.  Getting sick is one thing, but sex changes, species changes and super power gettings, that's stuff you try to sort out imediately in hopes you can either fix it or know for sure you can't and how to get on with it.  These characters seemed to just float on endlessly through stuff that if i skipped from after all the intorductions to the catalyst in the middle, which i shall call the 'tea' incident, i would've probably gave this book an eleven out of ten.

Lastly the premise that only these women changed because of menopause is shakey, why didn't it affect all other menopausal women taking the products?  I guess I was expecting something deeper.  And the crew failed to come together with a cleary defiend leader.  Bands of superheroes tend to have their roles clearly defined in a group.  Thats what the first book is for.  I know what their powers are, their motivations, their personalities, but their roles in the group and how that makes them work together, the book never quite got there, not even at the end.  They were still kind of looking at one person for a plan, but i never got the impression they expected one from all the arguments they kept having.  It was just she was used to making plans so by defualt they stared at her.  If anything, the intern should be the woman in charge, she had her act together and a sans superpower leader might be what they need to get it together.

So hate aside, this book somehow managed to go from zero to fun and awesome.  Boredom to high action, whoa this writer can write.  It was fun light reading and easy to follow and way interesting once the whole 'tea' incident happened.  I honestly couldn't stop reading.  The rythm pacing, hell everything about the whole second half of this book was almost too good to be true, like i wasn't reading the same book.  Usually after a few chapters if i don't like it, i stop reading, but I read on and I'm actually glad I did this time.  Pleasantly surprised, and if this second half is an indication of what this author can do I am on board for the next instalment of this series, i didn't think it would be a series but I'm not complaining.



Long boring first part aside, this book is worth the read for something light, occasionally funny and just a different take on what being a superhero is.  In short i'm calling it menopausal brilliance.
      

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