Wearing the Cape: A Superhero Story

An average read with somewhat interesting characters. Hope is a young woman who is a “breakthrough” - someone who receives their powers after “the event” that gave most other people theirs. She is recruited to join the top superhero team in the state, The Sentinals, as a sidekick while she decides what she wants to do with her powers.

The pacing of the story was pretty good. There was lots of action and we learned a lot about the world that Hope found herself in. However I felt like there was a bit much telling and not enough showing, and we didn't really see enough of what Hope was feeling about her situation in my opinion. Hope seemed pretty generic. I found several other characters more interesting and wished the story was focusing on them instead!

Some of Hope's relationships felt rushed, especially the romantic one. I understand that certain events were supposed to help Hope make her decision in the end, but I would have liked to see the relationship stretched out over a couple of books, to have seen some growth from the characters before the talk of marriage came up.

I did feel at times that the religious side of Hope was forced upon me as a reader. Hope's symbol was similar to the Star of Bethlehem, her conversations with her priest, her catholic ideals etc I felt like some of it wasn't really necessary to the story. But that said, it was minimal and the story was good regardless.

All in all I felt Wearing the Cape was a great start to a series.

I'm a comic book geek and I enjoy super-hero novels. Wearing the Cape was the origin story of Astra, a Super Girl type hero and follows her from getting her powers to saving the world. I like the book and gave it three stars because I didn't really connect with the character of Astra. There are many other heroes in Wearing the Cape that I would have rather read about.

Wearing the Cape is a good superhero series; powers are generic compared to Worm's and tend to fall into common “packages” such as the protagonist being an Atlas class hero (flight, strength, durability). Think of it as a deconstruction of the genre rather than a full reconstruction like Worm.

The superheros organizations main day-to-day concern is being seen patrolling and helping people and building good will because they know one day things will go to shit in a huge villain attack and they will need the public on their side to reduce backlash.

Superheros have no legal powers but work with local police on enforcing warrants, including controversy about the use of “no knock” warrants against powered targets.

Aircraft have “powered assist lift here” markings indicating where a flying hero should lift from if supporting them in an emergency.

the Villain in the first book has a proper rational motivation and goals, even though this is not clear at first and he just seems like a random terrorist. I'd rate him as very compelling in characterization and motivation, but telling you why without major spoilers isn't possible.

Overall I'd say it's the best superhero series I've read other than Worm. Worm tying backstory and powers together via trigger event and making every power unique is missing, but I can't think of any other superhero setting that comes close to doing that as well as Worm.