Forging Hephaestus

God what a long book, but so worth it. I loved everything about this. Many times the characters knew things that made sense for the story, and this wasn't just pulled out of nowhere. All the characters were unique and diverse in character. But fuck there were a lot of them. 

Many times I had totally forgotten either the power, code name or real name of different characters which made some parts a little confusing but I got through it. I also love the fact that being a villain of a hero in this particular context really says nothing of the moral compass of the person. There were bad guy heroes and good guy villains throughout as well. 

I also love Nexus basically just being a totally insane omnipotent pest. I don't know why, but I like that he just jumps in sometimes to confuse and frighten everyone while he is bored, super interesting. 

This was way more fleshed out and entertaining than I thought it would be. Just a few cookie cutter tropes here and there, but definitely interesting enough to make me wait for the next.

I did not find anything exceptional about the premise: a young woman with super powers is enlisted to be trained in the super villains league. If the ‘villains' here is suppose to be a twist, it is of no consequence. The villains have more rules and codes of moral conduct then the average do gooder hero. I found that to be a bit cringy, but overlookable.

Therefore, this is just a story of people with super powers and how they organize into a league of individuals with the same interest. The book deals with recruiting, training and rules to follow. Other than that, there is a handful of small stories about different super powered humans (and aliens, and AIs).

The mains characters, writing and dialogues are just OK, but the main plot is slowly exposed or non-existent. This is the killer for me. I suspect this books acts as an introduction to the other, possible more interesting, ones.

Read 6:02/26:58 22%