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Can a fifteen year old girl in homemade tights save the world... and publishing? We'll see...
Every author in the world, it seems, is dead-set against the sudden explosion of independently-published authors and companies that will let you publish, print, sell, and even electronically distribute your books without interference from agents, publishers, bookstores, and others.
Garrison Keillor became the latest of those authors selfishly and self-interestedly guarding the gates to the Kingdom of Publishing when he, in a recent column, said that the future of publishing is "18 million authors in America, each with an average of 14 readers, eight of whom are blood relatives. Average annual earnings: $1.75."
Keillor-- whose books I haven't read in years, although I enjoyed the two that I did read -- has reason to fear the opening of the doors, because it creates competition, and competition is to be feared by those who may not be able to compete. The growth of indie publishing, and the proliferation of writers whose work is available for free, Keillor said, makes readers like hummingbirds flitting from flower to flower, committed to none. He thinks readers are better served by fewer books, fewer options, and more costs.
I disagree, and I daresay that Cory Doctorow and Joe Sergi disagree, too. Doctorow makes all his work available for free (and writes for Boing Boing, a tech-y sort of blog where you can read his work for free.) He seems to be doing all right. He may not be hobnobbing with the elite in Manhattan, as Keillor recently was, but he seems to be doing all right on his annual $1.75.
Joe Sergi does not, so far as I can tell, distribute his work for free; his novel, Sky Girl And The Superheroic Legacy, is available on Amazon and other places, about $8 hard copy, $3.99 digital.) Sergi is also not a full-time author, it seems, or at least not solely an author. His website doesn't say it, but the bio in his book says he works for an unnamed government agency, so he may have a day job. Or maybe that's hype. I don't know.
What I do know is that Sergi has gone through a small publisher -- iEnovel at www.ienovel.com - joining the ranks of the writers who choose to go beyond traditional publishing to independently publishing**- and I say independently published rather than small- or self-published because self-publishing has a bad name and books like Sky Girl and the Superheroic Legacy do not need to be weighed down with negative connotations. In the music industry, indie artists are those that make their own CDs or have small labels, and there are unsigned bands who can release albums and maintain their credibility. No serious music fan would say "I don't want to listen to a CD from a band that was not released from a major label." Not in these days of Youtube and Myspace and mp3s and iTunes all allowing bands to get their music out in hopes that they'll find an audience.
Indie bands are considered hip and credible; indie authors -- authors whose works are published by small presses, including micropresses consisting of one author and a link to Lulu or Createspace -- should be given the same benefit of the doubt, which is: Let's see what they can do.
That's what I thought when Sergi asked me to review Sky Girl and the Superheroic Legacy. Being an indie author myself (and I won't link to my stuff in a review of Sergi's stuff, 'cause I'm not that selfish), I of course was inclined to give Sergi the benefit of the doubt and see what his book was all about.
Plus, I got me a free book out of it. Autographed! With what will likely be a priceless doodle someday, a doodle I'll sell at Sotheby's for 100,000,000 pounds (or $7.50, American.)
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Sorry, Joe: I'm not sharing those profits with you. You've got your book.
And what a book it is! I grew up reading comic books, and quit (for the most part) about 20 years ago -- and then, whenever I dipped back into the comic book world, I'd despair that there were no new superheroes. I recently read the first 4 or 5 issues of a Green Lantern miniseries (Blackest Night), those being the first comic books I'd read in about two decades, and I was surprised, and saddened, to see that I still knew nearly every super hero in the books. In 20 years -- half my life -- no new superheroes had been created that were worth including in the book? That seemed remarkable, and remarkably uncreative, to me.
Which led me, before reading Sergi's book, to ponder how the current marketing system: authors write books, and sell them to agents, who sell them to editors, who sell them to marketing departments, who sell them to book stores, who then finally sell them to us, stifles creativity. Whether I, the end purchaser, will like or hate a book, is something like the fifth step in that process: Traditional publishing asks this question: Which book will best appeal to an agent, editor, marketing department, publisher, bookstore buyer, and reader? Writers are not writing for readers; they are writing for agents, who are asking what will sell, to editors, and so on.
Too often, that question is the same old stuff. It is not, I think, a coincidence that there are more and varied bands than ever before, and that music does not sound as homogenous as it did in the 70s or 80s or 90s. Meanwhile, a trip around the Borders shows all too many books that are cut from the same mold: 53 different Harlan Cobens all writing about an intrepid adventurer who fights shadowy government agencies.
Joe Sergi and his wonderful creation, Sky Girl and the Superheroic Legacy, are helping buck both that trend and the no-new-superheroes-trend, and for those reasons alone I was inclined to give the book a shot.
The cover of the book,
Is starkly impressive; when I opened the box Joe had shipped it to me in -- my first-ever official review copy of a book -- I was drawn in by the image of the teenager standing in the middle of... nothing? A plain? Another planet? A good cover makes you pick up a book to find out more about it, and this was a good cover.
[SPOILER ALERT! SPOILERS ABOUND FROM HERE ON OUT!]
The back page copy also does well in drawing the reader in a little more. The first two lines: Who is Sky Girl? Imagine living up to a legacy that no one can remember move the story beyond just "a superhero story" and create a hook, the mystery of the legacy that nobody can remember. It's not just a secret identity this Sky Girl has; it's a secret legacy.
The book opens, as all good superhero stories do, with a flashback: We meet Sky Boy, who lives in a world that seems both familiar and un-, a comic book world where there are villains and magic and giant weapons constructed in the midst of cities. Sky Boy is caught up in a battle with Dr. Z and the Evil Brain and his henchmen, and his girlfriend is (as a hero's girlfriend must be) caught up in it, as well.
The attack climaxes and Sergi moves to the next chapter, where he introduced DeDe, a sophomore gymnast with a nerdy best friend who is fixated on comic books with an intensity akin to the intensity that DeDe hooks onto her crush, Adam, with. As the story moves along, DeDe practices her gymnastics -- she qualifies for a national tournament early on in the book, practicing under a coach who becomes more and more mysterious as the novel progresses -- and, in practicing, begins to have some strange things happen. Strange things like "jumping entirely through the ceiling of the gym," and accidentally blowing up a computer in the principal's office.
It's her friend, Jason the comic geek, who first suspects what readers have guessed: DeDe is developing superpowers, and just in time, because DeDe, it turns out, is surrounded by more problems than typical for a high school sophomore: not only does she get grounded for wrecking up the gym, and not only is her crush dating a rich girl from another school (who is also her competitor for the Nationals gymnastic trophy) but DeDe also has a tendency to drift away, in her sleep, to a mysterious chamber where lizards, owls, and a giant creature talk to her and try to convince her to take up the mantle of protecting the earth using her powers.
DeDe says no -- something of a surprise, in a superhero book, as heroes are not always allowed to be petulant. We let heroes have rent troubles, we let heroes carry enormous psychological scars that essentially leave them one step away from serial-killer-dom, we let heroes be alcoholics, but heroes are rarely allowed moments of selfishness that don't immediately come back to haunt them: when Peter Parker refused to stop the robber at the wrestling match, the guy escaped, and then made it immediately to Peter's house, where he killed Uncle Ben. Heroes are not often allowed to get away with doing nothing; the comic book karma demands retribution, quickly.
So when DeDe meets the Protectorate -- the mysterious council in her dreams that wants her to take up the legacy -- and they tell her that Sky Boy is dead (we guessed as much, from the first chapter) and that they want her to take up the job of protecting the earth, comic-book mores demand that DeDe accept, or that she reject it and that something bad then happens to her -- so she either wholeheartedly accepts being a superhero, or she is guilted into it. That's how all current superheroes got their jobs.
DeDe says no way... and nothing bad happens. Sergi throws twists like that into his book from time to time, cleverly updating superheroes and their own legacies -- Sky Girl is picking up the mantle of all superheroes and trying to update it and make it both fresh and modern, and doing so with a nice meta-twist: As DeDe becomes more familiar with her abilities, her friend Jason, diehard comic fan, becomes convinced that she's got Sky Boy's powers -- powers he knows about because he reads Sky Boy comics; that's when we learn that not only did Sky Boy die, but in dying, his memory was erased from the minds of everyone, and his villains were similarly driven undercover.
That's the underlying theme of Sky Girl: superheroes existed, and then they didn't and we didn't remember them and our lives were plain and boring... until Sky Girl came along and, in doing so, resurrected not just her powers but also the world of superheroes and super villains, a world where teenage girls can learn to fly over the football field at the high school, but within a few days of that they're going to have to face off against a giant mechanical ape; in unfolding that story, Sergi is challenging not just his protagonist but also the world of comic books entirely -- all those superheroes that have been the same for 7 decades, fighting the same battles, dying and coming back and dying and coming back, and Sergi wants none of it. He's created a new hero with new powers and updated villains and a world that's like the one we knew, but it isn't.
That world is a world very much in flux, just as SkyGirl/DeDe herself is. As DeDe's powers evolve, quickly -- the powers are a mix of the traditional (flying and superstrength) and the updated (infra-red vision as opposed to x-ray vision, a forcefield that protects her and her uniform, maybe) and the new (the SkyPulse -- a burst of energy that can short-circuit electronics) -- the world, too, is evolving: Supervillains are re-emerging and various people are closing in on what turns out to be the central quest of the book, a need to get the "Choyut Dragon," a mystical statue that may grant legendary powers to its holder, if the holder can get it through gift or victory in competition. The Choyut Dragon is not just an ancient statue -- but the prize for the gymnastic nationals competition that DeDe is practicing for as she copes with her new status.
Everyone in Sky Girl has a secret, it seems -- DeDe is Sky Girl; her mom may have been Sky Boy's girlfriend. Her dad may have been Sky Boy himself. Her principal, her science teacher, her coach, even her rival: all hiding something important that DeDe must piece together in time, a task that she's helped out in by her friend, Jason, who may himself be hiding a secret crush on DeDe (or so I thought, based on scenes at the end of the book.)
All these secrets and storylines converge in a crash -- literally -- at the nationals competition, where DeDe is set to begin competing, having rejected being a superhero in favor of being the victor in the gymnastics meet and it's at the start of her routine that all heck breaks loose, for an ending to the book that was rousing and satisfying. The meet happens (almost), villains are revealed, motives are explained, the Choyut Dragon is won by someone, and DeDe ends up back at her house, where she's pushed the dresser in front of the door to block her room while she meets again with the Protectorate, to tell them that she will, after all, be a superhero for them. She's not doing it because anything bad happened to her; she's doing it because it's the natural progression of her journey -- making Sky Girl perhaps the first superhero ever to take up the job simply because that's what seemed best to do right now.
The book ends with an even better updating and twist: a vignette where Sky Girl is in New York (where Sergi does, unfortunately, make a reference to Ground Zero and 9/11 -- the one flaw I found in the book, and a flaw that makes me again call for a moratorium on all 9/11 references in pop culture for, say, 50 years)(but it's a minor, fleeting reference, so I can forgive it) and she fights a small gang of gorilla soldiers, saving a man from attack by them while getting tips via radio from Jason; the scene hinted at more stories to come and also showed a nice twist on the super hero genre -- the comic book geek helping the super hero who hates comic books.
Sky Girl and The Superheroic Legacy isn't as polished as some writers; it's not slick like Grisham and it doesn't have the poetry of a John Irving. But the writing is good; it's on a par with other writers who've gotten mass acceptance, and a damn sight better than some. I tried, for example, to read The Law Of Nines by Terry Goodkind last year, and quit about 1/3 of the way through; I found the writing pedestrian and plodding and the story itself too slow-developing to capture my interest. Sergi's writing is better than Goodkinds, and his pacing and plotting are better, too: When I was about midway through the book, I found myself driving home one night and actually looking forward to picking it up and reading more that night. That's the second-highest-compliment I can give a book: It made me want to keep reading it, and that's the test of a good book. It's not whether an agent thought it could sell or an editor happened to read your query letter after lunch when she was in a good mood; it's about whether a reader, having read the first word, sentence, paragraph, chapter, will want to go on to the next and the next and the next. With Sky Girl and the Superheroic Legacy, I wanted to keep going.
And it met the other test, too: As I've said before, a book is really good if, after I finish it, I put it down and just think for a while about the book. I finished Sky Girl last night, about 10:30, and when I'd gotten through it, I put it in my night stand, and just sat and listened to the sound of the air conditioner while I let images of giant apes, gymnastics competition, tiger people, lizard-advisors, and comic book geeks, all surrounding a girl in a superhero outfit, roll through my mind.
I didn't, Garrison Keillor, flit from Sergi's book to the next like an attention-span addled hummingbird with nothing better to do and no appreciation of fine literature. I read Sky Girl, which I got for free, with an avid appreciation for the craft of a writer who loves his subject and wants people to read it and love it, too. I hope Sergi makes more than $1.75 off his book this year -- proving Keillor wrong, and proving Big Writing wrong, too: There is a market, and a desire, for books like Sky Girl and the Superheroic Legacy, because there are readers who want something new, something fresh, something that isn't the same-old same-old that Keillor and his kind have been peddling to agents to peddle to us for years. I'm glad that the chance I took on reading Sergi's book and reviewing it was time well spent -- and I'm hopeful that Sergi and a bevy of Sky Girl novels can do for writing and indie publishing what Sky Girl did for her town.
Which was to beat up a giant mechanical ape in a gymnasium. So... um... it's not the best metaphor, but you get the point.
Sky Girl and the Superheroic Legacy is written by Joe Sergi and published by iEnovel. Visit Joe Sergi's website here.
And what a book it is! I grew up reading comic books, and quit (for the most part) about 20 years ago -- and then, whenever I dipped back into the comic book world, I'd despair that there were no new superheroes. I recently read the first 4 or 5 issues of a Green Lantern miniseries (Blackest Night), those being the first comic books I'd read in about two decades, and I was surprised, and saddened, to see that I still knew nearly every super hero in the books. In 20 years -- half my life -- no new superheroes had been created that were worth including in the book? That seemed remarkable, and remarkably uncreative, to me.
Which led me, before reading Sergi's book, to ponder how the current marketing system: authors write books, and sell them to agents, who sell them to editors, who sell them to marketing departments, who sell them to book stores, who then finally sell them to us, stifles creativity. Whether I, the end purchaser, will like or hate a book, is something like the fifth step in that process: Traditional publishing asks this question: Which book will best appeal to an agent, editor, marketing department, publisher, bookstore buyer, and reader? Writers are not writing for readers; they are writing for agents, who are asking what will sell, to editors, and so on.
Too often, that question is the same old stuff. It is not, I think, a coincidence that there are more and varied bands than ever before, and that music does not sound as homogenous as it did in the 70s or 80s or 90s. Meanwhile, a trip around the Borders shows all too many books that are cut from the same mold: 53 different Harlan Cobens all writing about an intrepid adventurer who fights shadowy government agencies.
Joe Sergi and his wonderful creation, Sky Girl and the Superheroic Legacy, are helping buck both that trend and the no-new-superheroes-trend, and for those reasons alone I was inclined to give the book a shot.
The cover of the book,
Is starkly impressive; when I opened the box Joe had shipped it to me in -- my first-ever official review copy of a book -- I was drawn in by the image of the teenager standing in the middle of... nothing? A plain? Another planet? A good cover makes you pick up a book to find out more about it, and this was a good cover.
[SPOILER ALERT! SPOILERS ABOUND FROM HERE ON OUT!]
The back page copy also does well in drawing the reader in a little more. The first two lines: Who is Sky Girl? Imagine living up to a legacy that no one can remember move the story beyond just "a superhero story" and create a hook, the mystery of the legacy that nobody can remember. It's not just a secret identity this Sky Girl has; it's a secret legacy.
The book opens, as all good superhero stories do, with a flashback: We meet Sky Boy, who lives in a world that seems both familiar and un-, a comic book world where there are villains and magic and giant weapons constructed in the midst of cities. Sky Boy is caught up in a battle with Dr. Z and the Evil Brain and his henchmen, and his girlfriend is (as a hero's girlfriend must be) caught up in it, as well.
The attack climaxes and Sergi moves to the next chapter, where he introduced DeDe, a sophomore gymnast with a nerdy best friend who is fixated on comic books with an intensity akin to the intensity that DeDe hooks onto her crush, Adam, with. As the story moves along, DeDe practices her gymnastics -- she qualifies for a national tournament early on in the book, practicing under a coach who becomes more and more mysterious as the novel progresses -- and, in practicing, begins to have some strange things happen. Strange things like "jumping entirely through the ceiling of the gym," and accidentally blowing up a computer in the principal's office.
It's her friend, Jason the comic geek, who first suspects what readers have guessed: DeDe is developing superpowers, and just in time, because DeDe, it turns out, is surrounded by more problems than typical for a high school sophomore: not only does she get grounded for wrecking up the gym, and not only is her crush dating a rich girl from another school (who is also her competitor for the Nationals gymnastic trophy) but DeDe also has a tendency to drift away, in her sleep, to a mysterious chamber where lizards, owls, and a giant creature talk to her and try to convince her to take up the mantle of protecting the earth using her powers.
DeDe says no -- something of a surprise, in a superhero book, as heroes are not always allowed to be petulant. We let heroes have rent troubles, we let heroes carry enormous psychological scars that essentially leave them one step away from serial-killer-dom, we let heroes be alcoholics, but heroes are rarely allowed moments of selfishness that don't immediately come back to haunt them: when Peter Parker refused to stop the robber at the wrestling match, the guy escaped, and then made it immediately to Peter's house, where he killed Uncle Ben. Heroes are not often allowed to get away with doing nothing; the comic book karma demands retribution, quickly.
So when DeDe meets the Protectorate -- the mysterious council in her dreams that wants her to take up the legacy -- and they tell her that Sky Boy is dead (we guessed as much, from the first chapter) and that they want her to take up the job of protecting the earth, comic-book mores demand that DeDe accept, or that she reject it and that something bad then happens to her -- so she either wholeheartedly accepts being a superhero, or she is guilted into it. That's how all current superheroes got their jobs.
DeDe says no way... and nothing bad happens. Sergi throws twists like that into his book from time to time, cleverly updating superheroes and their own legacies -- Sky Girl is picking up the mantle of all superheroes and trying to update it and make it both fresh and modern, and doing so with a nice meta-twist: As DeDe becomes more familiar with her abilities, her friend Jason, diehard comic fan, becomes convinced that she's got Sky Boy's powers -- powers he knows about because he reads Sky Boy comics; that's when we learn that not only did Sky Boy die, but in dying, his memory was erased from the minds of everyone, and his villains were similarly driven undercover.
That's the underlying theme of Sky Girl: superheroes existed, and then they didn't and we didn't remember them and our lives were plain and boring... until Sky Girl came along and, in doing so, resurrected not just her powers but also the world of superheroes and super villains, a world where teenage girls can learn to fly over the football field at the high school, but within a few days of that they're going to have to face off against a giant mechanical ape; in unfolding that story, Sergi is challenging not just his protagonist but also the world of comic books entirely -- all those superheroes that have been the same for 7 decades, fighting the same battles, dying and coming back and dying and coming back, and Sergi wants none of it. He's created a new hero with new powers and updated villains and a world that's like the one we knew, but it isn't.
That world is a world very much in flux, just as SkyGirl/DeDe herself is. As DeDe's powers evolve, quickly -- the powers are a mix of the traditional (flying and superstrength) and the updated (infra-red vision as opposed to x-ray vision, a forcefield that protects her and her uniform, maybe) and the new (the SkyPulse -- a burst of energy that can short-circuit electronics) -- the world, too, is evolving: Supervillains are re-emerging and various people are closing in on what turns out to be the central quest of the book, a need to get the "Choyut Dragon," a mystical statue that may grant legendary powers to its holder, if the holder can get it through gift or victory in competition. The Choyut Dragon is not just an ancient statue -- but the prize for the gymnastic nationals competition that DeDe is practicing for as she copes with her new status.
Everyone in Sky Girl has a secret, it seems -- DeDe is Sky Girl; her mom may have been Sky Boy's girlfriend. Her dad may have been Sky Boy himself. Her principal, her science teacher, her coach, even her rival: all hiding something important that DeDe must piece together in time, a task that she's helped out in by her friend, Jason, who may himself be hiding a secret crush on DeDe (or so I thought, based on scenes at the end of the book.)
All these secrets and storylines converge in a crash -- literally -- at the nationals competition, where DeDe is set to begin competing, having rejected being a superhero in favor of being the victor in the gymnastics meet and it's at the start of her routine that all heck breaks loose, for an ending to the book that was rousing and satisfying. The meet happens (almost), villains are revealed, motives are explained, the Choyut Dragon is won by someone, and DeDe ends up back at her house, where she's pushed the dresser in front of the door to block her room while she meets again with the Protectorate, to tell them that she will, after all, be a superhero for them. She's not doing it because anything bad happened to her; she's doing it because it's the natural progression of her journey -- making Sky Girl perhaps the first superhero ever to take up the job simply because that's what seemed best to do right now.
The book ends with an even better updating and twist: a vignette where Sky Girl is in New York (where Sergi does, unfortunately, make a reference to Ground Zero and 9/11 -- the one flaw I found in the book, and a flaw that makes me again call for a moratorium on all 9/11 references in pop culture for, say, 50 years)(but it's a minor, fleeting reference, so I can forgive it) and she fights a small gang of gorilla soldiers, saving a man from attack by them while getting tips via radio from Jason; the scene hinted at more stories to come and also showed a nice twist on the super hero genre -- the comic book geek helping the super hero who hates comic books.
Sky Girl and The Superheroic Legacy isn't as polished as some writers; it's not slick like Grisham and it doesn't have the poetry of a John Irving. But the writing is good; it's on a par with other writers who've gotten mass acceptance, and a damn sight better than some. I tried, for example, to read The Law Of Nines by Terry Goodkind last year, and quit about 1/3 of the way through; I found the writing pedestrian and plodding and the story itself too slow-developing to capture my interest. Sergi's writing is better than Goodkinds, and his pacing and plotting are better, too: When I was about midway through the book, I found myself driving home one night and actually looking forward to picking it up and reading more that night. That's the second-highest-compliment I can give a book: It made me want to keep reading it, and that's the test of a good book. It's not whether an agent thought it could sell or an editor happened to read your query letter after lunch when she was in a good mood; it's about whether a reader, having read the first word, sentence, paragraph, chapter, will want to go on to the next and the next and the next. With Sky Girl and the Superheroic Legacy, I wanted to keep going.
And it met the other test, too: As I've said before, a book is really good if, after I finish it, I put it down and just think for a while about the book. I finished Sky Girl last night, about 10:30, and when I'd gotten through it, I put it in my night stand, and just sat and listened to the sound of the air conditioner while I let images of giant apes, gymnastics competition, tiger people, lizard-advisors, and comic book geeks, all surrounding a girl in a superhero outfit, roll through my mind.
I didn't, Garrison Keillor, flit from Sergi's book to the next like an attention-span addled hummingbird with nothing better to do and no appreciation of fine literature. I read Sky Girl, which I got for free, with an avid appreciation for the craft of a writer who loves his subject and wants people to read it and love it, too. I hope Sergi makes more than $1.75 off his book this year -- proving Keillor wrong, and proving Big Writing wrong, too: There is a market, and a desire, for books like Sky Girl and the Superheroic Legacy, because there are readers who want something new, something fresh, something that isn't the same-old same-old that Keillor and his kind have been peddling to agents to peddle to us for years. I'm glad that the chance I took on reading Sergi's book and reviewing it was time well spent -- and I'm hopeful that Sergi and a bevy of Sky Girl novels can do for writing and indie publishing what Sky Girl did for her town.
Which was to beat up a giant mechanical ape in a gymnasium. So... um... it's not the best metaphor, but you get the point.
Sky Girl and the Superheroic Legacy is written by Joe Sergi and published by iEnovel. Visit Joe Sergi's website here.
**The original post said Sergi published the book on his own; however, as noted in his comment I was wrong. While Sergi had a third-party publisher for his book, the distinction doesn't affect my argument, as many "traditional" publishers [and reviewers, and the like] treat small-press and micropress publishers as being the same as self-publication. I do regret the error, though.
3 comments:
As someone who has read this book, I couldn't agree more with this review - except the bit about the 9/11 reference. (I don't understand why mentioning 9/11 should be banned. The events of that day are still pervasive in our everyday lives. I think there's nothing wrong with it being mentioned because 9/11 must never be forgotten.) That aside, I encourage people to read this book and support authors such as Joe Sergi who have their books published by smaller publishers like iEnovel.com (which is not, btw, a self-publishing shop in disguise). I loved Sky Girl and have read the book more than once already. It was fresh and non-formulaic - and I can't wait for the next book!
Hi, my name is Joe Sergi and I am the author of Sky Girl. Thanks for the review and I'm glad you liked the book. I wish I could take credit for being brave enough to strike out on my own and self publish Sky Girl. The book is actually published by iEnovel, a small St. Louis publishing company run by Carly McCraken, who picked up Sky Girl when many big and mid-sized publishers were telling me that, although they liked the book, the market for superhero fiction was too small. So, really, the credit goes to publishers like Carly, who take chances on people like me.
I will, however, take credit for all those other nice things you (and AF Girl) said about the book. ;-)
Once again, thanks for the review.
Joe Sergi
PS: I should also note that, although I am nowhere near as talented as Mr. Doctorow, I do provide free content at www.metahumanpress.com, where I write a free monthly serial about a superheroine named Psi-kotic. I should warn that the story is much darker than Sky Girl and has some adult themes.
Thanks so much for the detailed and engaging review of Sky Girl and ther Superheroic Legacy. I'm anxious to read it with after reading through your review.
I'm so glad you enjoyed the book and participated in Joe's tour.
All the best,
Cheryl
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