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A review by simonlorden
No More Heroes by Michelle Kan
2.0
I'm /this/ close to giving one star tbh, this just really wasn't for me.
Over half the book consists of fight scenes, which I'm sure would have looked really cool in a visual medium, but reading them was kind of repetitive and boring. The cities have such imaginative names such as the City, the Other City, the City Over, etc. (This makes me wonder - do the people living in the Other City call it that, or is it that for them that is the City, and the original city is the Other City...?) But at the same time, one of the guys is Maori (with that word used), so clearly it takes place in our world somewhere.
One of the characters is genderfluid, which is cool, but I feel like it was more "told" than "shown". It's described in a few sentences, but we don't really learn much about what this identity means to her. This same character is also allegedly aromantic asexual (and the book is #ownvoices for that) but this... doesn't come up at all. The book doesn't have romance and focuses on platonic relationships, which is something that resonates with a lot of aromantic readers - but no discussion of romance or sex also means that somebody being aromantic asexual isn't mentioned. I mean, for all I know all of them could be aroace because nobody is shown to be in a romantic or sexual relationship.
Overall I was just really bored, not really connected to any of the characters, and frankly let down since I was expecting the queerness to be more explicit or, you know, discussed.
Over half the book consists of fight scenes, which I'm sure would have looked really cool in a visual medium, but reading them was kind of repetitive and boring. The cities have such imaginative names such as the City, the Other City, the City Over, etc. (This makes me wonder - do the people living in the Other City call it that, or is it that for them that is the City, and the original city is the Other City...?) But at the same time, one of the guys is Maori (with that word used), so clearly it takes place in our world somewhere.
One of the characters is genderfluid, which is cool, but I feel like it was more "told" than "shown". It's described in a few sentences, but we don't really learn much about what this identity means to her. This same character is also allegedly aromantic asexual (and the book is #ownvoices for that) but this... doesn't come up at all. The book doesn't have romance and focuses on platonic relationships, which is something that resonates with a lot of aromantic readers - but no discussion of romance or sex also means that somebody being aromantic asexual isn't mentioned. I mean, for all I know all of them could be aroace because nobody is shown to be in a romantic or sexual relationship.
Overall I was just really bored, not really connected to any of the characters, and frankly let down since I was expecting the queerness to be more explicit or, you know, discussed.