Super Powereds: Year 1

Best Series In Recent Memory

What did you love best about Super Powereds: Year 1?

Each primary, and many secondary, characters are fully fleshed out. They mature over the course of the novel, as well as the series. The training is well thought out and the faculty have individual personalities and backstories.

What other book might you compare Super Powereds: Year 1 to and why?

In an oversimplification, you might think of this series as Hogwarts for Supers, but MUCH better in every way.

Which character – as performed by Kyle McCarley – was your favorite?

I enjoyed them all. The individualization of voices is very well done, which is no easy task with such a large cast of characters.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

It's hard to pick a single moment above all others, but perhaps when the core team finds itself challenged by harsh environmental conditions (no spoilers here).

Any additional comments?

I seldom bother to take the time to write a review, so the fact that I am for this book (and the series), is high praise indeed. It may seem that I am gushing in this review, which is unusual enough for an old man ("GET OFF MY LAWN!"), but I can't imagine any reader/listener that wouldn't enjoy this entire series. My wife and I enjoyed listening together and are eagerly awaiting the fourth installment, but with the same mixed feelings that you get as you approach the end of any great novel, never wanting it to end.

In conclusion, BUY this book immediately. After listening to this series, I bought every Audible audio book available of Drew Hayes' writings, though we haven't listened to them yet.

81 of 84 people found this review helpful

Brillant!

I loved this story.

This story centers around 5 super powered kids, who until an experimental surgery, haven't had control of their powers.

The narrorator does an excellent job with changing his voice for each character and pulls you into the story.

To me, the story is more like a season of a TV series, unlike most books which strive to be a movie.

Love the all the details, and the way it was written. And as an added bonus, I now know which super power I wish I had...

44 of 46 people found this review helpful

Fun, but in a YA way

I think that this book needs to be marked more clearly as a YA book. The whole college scene is in full glory with emphasis on drinking, dating, parties and clubs, etc. Personally, I am 100% not interested.

Barely visible between the stereotypical college activities is a world of ENORMOUS potential. The social interactions of supers vs. powers, the economic implications, the political players (who do Mr. Numbers and Mr. Transport work for anyway?), the nature of the superpowers in general... But these topics are barely touched upon. Instead, we have beer pong.

The narrator was mediocre, and I wasn't planning on continuing the series after this book... until the last 30 minutes. It finally got interesting. REALLY interesting. All that potential came flooding out and hooked me into giving the next book a try (although I may wait for it to go on sale).

All in all, if you've already read Brandon Sanderson's Reckoners and Rachel Aaron's Heartstrikers (two phenomenal YA series), and you're looking for something light and fun (maybe you want to relive your college years?), then go ahead and give this a shot.

16 of 17 people found this review helpful

Excellent story, characters; adjust for narrator

I was reluctant to purchase this book at first because of the narrator, whose voice I didn't care for, but playing the book at 1.25x speed solved that nicely. Loved the characters and story. Can't wait for the next installment to be available.

40 of 44 people found this review helpful

give it a chance

this book starts out really slow, with boring generic characters and crappy names like mr numbers and mr transport. I was about to give up on this, but i didn't have anything else to read, so i stuck with it. and i'm glad i did.

it's like a standard teenage movie / tv serie AT först, which is mildly entertaining, but it morphs into more superhero stuff as The characters grow.

now i'm off to get The second book. i'm itching to hear the rest!

18 of 20 people found this review helpful

Overexplained Ad Nauseam

The idea is interesting, but the writing is pretty bad. Every line of dialogue, every description, every character interaction is explained then explained some more. There's zero subtlety or room for interpretation. You understand what the author is getting at in the first couple of words but the sentence just keeps going on and on until every banal detail is spelled out for you.

This tendency makes the dialogue especially painful, as characters talk like automatons rather than people, delivering plot and "worldbuilding" exposition at the speed of snore. Readers can skip through the repetition and heavy, obnoxious dialogue tagging on paper, but read aloud all the unnecessary word-spew becomes painful. Try listening to an "action scene" that takes two minutes to get through a character feinting a kick then throwing a punch. It's awful.

On top of that, the characters are, without exception, shallow stereotypes that make the denizens of the tongue-in-cheek superhero sendup Sky High look like a bunch of Hamlets.

I picked this book up looking for a fun, light, read--the audiobook equivalent of a popcorn flick. If it's popcorn, it's stale and bland. Sure, you can finish the whole thing, it won't kill you, but with so many better, fresher, and more enjoyable reads out there, I have to ask, why?

I plan to refund this book (if possible) and hopefully pick up something better.

Narrator Note: sounds like a tv-show teen--i.e. really whiny--which could be down to the writing or his own limitations. Can't really tell. His female voices though are almost offensively bad.

17 of 19 people found this review helpful

"[NAME] SAID" almost ruined it

This was a pretty good book to let play in the background, entertaining but you don't miss much if you space on it for a while.

Good:
- Strong characters I thought - well conceived with complex-ish back stories.
- Good heroes journey. Author takes you along with their development where as other (shorter though) books do the literary version of a training montage.
- Super powers were acknowledged to have some science and not absolutely ridiculous. So often now there isn't a set of "rules" for super powers and they end up controlling monsters from other dimensions and breaking the laws of physics. It wasn't organized like Mistborn or anything, but there was some order, a nod to that they are still understanding them, and nothing was absolutely over the top or unbeatable Superman type.

Not Good:
- No story really. This book just kinda of wanders through like its a season of Real World following super powered college kids. Which is fine but I like story arcs and the feeling that if I'm reading something I know it is driving the plot/story forward. Stuff happened and there was a climax, but it wasn't together feeling.
- The plot was moved forward often by the author telling you something was happening but offering absolutely no details about, like two characters discussing what is coming but with saying one specific about it. Which is fine in small doses but it was the main mechanism used and just isn't very nuanced.
- The narrator. I thought the voices were good but almost quit listening several times because of the "[name] said" or "[name] replied" were so frequent and off putting. At first I thought the author abused the use of it (too frequent) but the more I listened the more is was the way the narrator delivered it: flat, loud, and hard... even if was the character whispering. It honestly sounds like they recorded him saying every characters name and every speaking verb, and just spliced them in during post production where needed. It was really incongruous and off-putting.

I realize my negatives are longer than my positives but short of the 5000 times i heard the dead pan "VINCE SAID" it was an enjoyable listen.

64 of 75 people found this review helpful

Wish I could read the second chapter.

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes I would, characters are fun, and the narrator is pretty good.

Any additional comments?

Make an audio of year two and three already! I know the books exists already, where are they??

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

only negative is "x said".

I love comic books but they're just too short to enjoy. a novel about super hero's in training is just perfect though. if not for the repetitive "x said" the audio book would be great. in written form that's easy to ignore in an audio book its rather painful but it was worth it.

23 of 27 people found this review helpful

Stick with it

It starts out slow and this is one of the first books I almost did not finish

3 of 3 people found this review helpful