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A review by rubeusbeaky
The Ables by Jeremy Scott
1.0
This book is a travesty of children's fiction, and so far removed from the wit which I have come to associate with Jeremy Scott, that I swear he wrote The Most Cliche Kids Book on a drunken dare. That, or this book was secretly a job interview for a new CinemaSins channel called LitSins. If you were looking for smart readers who can catch your off-brand, ironic trope usage, you succeeded; sign me up, Mr. Scott.
Spoilers ahead:
Cliches - Let's get it out of the way, the following cliches were used in lieu of creative or emotional storytelling:
* A kid learns they have magical powers as they hit or near puberty.
* Protagonist just moved to a new town, and has concerns about fitting in.
* Protagonist has never had friends, but within a day at their new school they have besties for life /and/ a rival for life.
* A school for mutants. I'm sorry, for kids with magic. One more time, superpowers.
* A teacher or mentor gives a "grudging", heavily detailed info dump about the ancient, legendary, evil magic-user who was totally defeated and definitely won't be coming back as the big bad of this book.
* Prophecies.
* A magical cult/order/group assumed long gone is definitely still active, and recruits or attempts to recruit the protagonist.
* Origin of magical powers is - drum roll - ancient Western Europe! As if only white people can dole out destiny!
* "Roll Credits" - The CinemaSins term for when the title is dropped in the work.
* Defeat the leader and the rest of their evil army becomes a non-problem. Looking at you, Night King!
* A "game" which turns into a real conflict between Good and Evil. Looking at you, Goblet of Fire, Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.
* Characters discuss plans they already know solely for the thinly veiled benefit of informing the audience.
* A scarred, dapper, old, British dude is the villain.
* Villain monologuing.
* Villain oversharing, and then needing to silence the protagonists because they know too much.
* Dead mom/Coma.
*"Playing the Pronoun Game!" -A CinemaSins term for characters using pronouns (him, her, it) to discuss something very specific that they're all familiar with, and wouldn't discuss in such a cryptic way, but the author wants to "surprise" the audience with a reveal later.
* Cartoon physics.
* "There is no Good and Evil" villain speech.
* "You and I are a lot alike" villain speech.
* Author breaks their own rules of magic.
* "You better come take a look at this."
* Magical protagonist gains even more, hitherto untapped, magical powers just in time for the final boss battle.
* Another villain monologue, this time about how the hero has no real choices besides Their Own Death, Death of Many, or Death of All.
* "No capes!"
Ableism - I cringe bringing this one up, because it seems like a lot of genuine love went into writing a book where disabled children save the day. That's a moving premise, there isn't enough representation in fantasy/fiction, and there definitely aren't enough protagonists with disabilities.
The problem is that the differently abled children in this story are not represented /well/. In the same way that queer-baiting is promising a queer story, but delivering a minor character who behaves in a cliche manner, or black-baiting is promising a black story, but then delivering a minor character with no mention of dealing with racism, this book is a form of baiting: It promised a story about disabled superheroes, but delivered an over-sized cast whose disabilities were "corrected" instead of incorporated or ignored entirely.
* Phillip, the blind protagonist, gains sight through technology and the help of a fellow super friend. He uses his new-found sight, and some deductive reasoning, to defeat the enemy. His blindness was treated like a hindrance to cure, instead of a part of his person and a potential motivation for how to solve problems differently from his peers.
* Henry, the aforementioned super friend, is wheelchair-bound. His superpowers are mentally based: he can read minds, speak to people through thoughts, and plant whatever he sees into the minds of others. About midway through the book, Henry becomes Phillip’s prop, and is teleported, pushed, or otherwise wheeled around purely to give Phillip a view of his surroundings. This would have been a great opportunity for conflict: Henry could have resented being used like an accessory or a sidekick instead of a proper hero, and he could have resented the team for “able-ising” when he’s proud of his mobility in a wheelchair and proud of their representation as a differently abled team. Instead, Henry becomes not only a physical prop, but an emotional crutch, existing only to buoy Phillip’s spirits.
* Bentley, the brains behind Phillip’s newfound sight, has ataxic cerebral palsey. It comes up once or twice as he stumbles in excitement. But it never effects his ability to use tools/make inventions, climb trees, or thwart enemies. Bentley has a super brain, and can extrapolate data faster than your average person. It would have been an interesting conflict for Bentley to overcome: to see him frustrated when he can imagine the solution he needs, but can’t command his body to perform with the necessary grace/precision. Or, to see Bentley not frustrated at all, but rather optimistic and dogged; perhaps his friends would underestimate him, and it could have been a source of interpersonal conflict. Bentley is also the only hero who thinks the evil Mr. Finch might have some good ideas, pursuing a superhero with the gift of every superpower. It would have been nice if either his love of knowledge, or a frustration with the limits of physical/human abilities, led him to join the baddies.
* James, the blind teleporter, isn't supposed to be able to teleport to places he hasn't been to before, he needs the spatial/tactile familiarity to sense his destination. By the end of the book he can teleport to another city/state with only a verbal description of the place. His impediment was only an impediment... until it wasn't. Not as a sign of growth, but because the author wanted the plot to be able to move elsewhere. James has practically no dialogue in the book, and Phillip often forgets that James is with them. The audience does too, Phil. The audience does too.
*Freddie has asthma. He puffs on his inhaler like a chain smoker would a cigarette. Asthma medication is medicine: It’s not needed with every breath. It has dosage cycles, like any other medicine. If Freddie had an oxygen tank, and needed oxygen with every breath, that would have been a different matter, and scored another point for representation. A tangled oxygen tank, a punctured tank, a villain with fireballs making Freddie a flammable liability, all would have made for interesting conflicts. Even Freddie as an asthmatic could have had an asthma attack due to stress or exertion at any point. But nope, Freddie is a gimmick, a single description of a character tick which is repeated two dozen times and effects the plot not a jot. He runs from henchmen just fine, if you’re wondering.
* Patrick has ADHD. Until he doesn’t; he just shuts off his hyperactivity when he’s sad. Or he’s trying to be polite. Or he needs to be focused during a meeting. Flick, like a light switch.
My long-winded point being that no character’s disability is used as A) Motivation for how to address the plot differently from an able-bodied person, or B) A catalyst for conflict, or even C) A barely remarkable character trait like green eyes or red hair. Instead, every disability is a D for Defect, which gets “corrected” - be it in universe or because the author gets sloppy – over the course of the book.
Other Biases – I wish the list stopped there, I really do, but this book was problematic for other reasons.
* When the Black Hermione controversy came up, I realized I had brain blinders: I’m white, and when I would read books I would imagine the protagonist as white, until the author said otherwise. I realized that’s racist, there is no reason why white should be the default. Other people have different defaults; why couldn’t I make a conscious effort to imagine black protagonists, until informed otherwise? So, that’s what I’ve been striving to do… And about midway through this book, the characters were diverse in my head, until Phillip was surprised to finally see Henry, and realized he’s black. This jarringly informed me of two things: Phillip is not black, and in fact no one in this book – besides Henry – is a person of color. It was a let down that this book is about a bunch of super white boys, and it was an insult that blackness should be surprising.
* Speaking of boys… I have an extreme aversion to books without strong, female characters. I don’t like the old guard, boys club, around comics/games/high fantasy/sci fi/anime and manga, etc. Like girls don’t like superpowers? Or fights between Good and Evil? Or coming of age stories? If anything, the success and clamor for Wonder Woman, WandaVision, Captain Marvel, and the like, should tell you that girls are hungry for bad@$$ representation in superhero fiction. A giant cast of superpowered girls was introduced in this book, each given a paragraph of physical and supernatural details… Minus one, brief cameo at Halloween, NONE of the girls EVER reappear in this book! Not a single one helps to save the day! I was expecting a girl squad to crash into our boy wonders at some point, and team up Stranger Things style. I think in this day and age, when electives and careers aren’t as segregated as they used to be, it’s more likely that a group of kids rallies around a common interest, than a common gender. I expected our heroes to be more mixed.
* And speaking of genders… There is a moment when our heroes start to gain some notoriety at school, and Phillip remarks that he and the boys were tickled that the popular girls were flirting with them. Another shocking awakening for me: The cis bias. I had no reason to assume that all the boys would like female attention, but this author thinks I should. I had no reason to assume that an athletic, talkative girl in a short skirt is flirting, i.e. desires the sexual attention of the boy she’s talking to. But this author does! There is another line of Phillip’s, where he muses that he would like to turn invisible so that he can spy on girls changing, which underscores the problem further: “Boys will be boys” is archaic, dangerous, and foolish. Girls are not objects, and not every boy fetishizes girls, AND not every person is drawn to bodies over other traits.
Okay, getting off my soapbox now…
Mechanics and Lack of Art – But my last angst with this book are the mechanical problems! I am a very tough critic of children’s books, A) Because I studied how to write them, and B) Because I read a lot of them, and know what the genre’s capable of delivering. Just because it’s written for kids, doesn’t mean a book can’t have character arcs, themes or motifs, mature conversations or conflicts, metaphors, and/or tone… Apparently, Jeremy missed the memo. This book is severely lacking in dimension.
* The characters swap archetypes and personalities. Bentley is the brains and the leader. Until he isn’t, then Phillip takes charge, or is named leader. Phillip is a pessimist. Until he isn’t, and instead he’s a mediator who tries to encourage his friends. Henry is a pragmatist, and his brutal honesty makes others cringe. Until he isn’t, and he’s sentimental, talking Phillip back from making brutal decisions. These characters don’t grow in an arc, from one way of thinking to another. They flip-flop back and forth, round and round, for the entirety of the book.
* Some plot elements make leaps in logic. Why does Phillip assume what slowed them down in their first SuperSim were their disabilities, and not the fact that they had no clues to follow as to where the villains would be? Why does the SuperSim take place at night, across the town, when real criminals might be out at night, and some families still have naive family members (like Patrick) who shouldn’t see superheroes at work. How come James can teleport into, but not out of, the library? Why does Donnie disappear when he has ALL superpowers? Isn’t he an indestructible healer who can teleport? Why does Chad agree to have his arm cut off to get back at a kid he suckerpunched? Why does Finch kill Chelsey, the No Power Zone generator, when he needs an NPZ to keep his super hostages from escaping? Why does Phillip think the best way to fight a villain with fire powers is to pour gasoline? So many holes.
* The further on in the book, the more typos and grammatical errors. Things like, “It was a Monday during the fifth week of school.” Weeks only have one Monday each, so you wouldn’t have to say a Monday. Just say Monday. Just say Monday!
An over-expositional, heartless, meandering mess of a book, which insults its author and its audience. You’re better than this, Jeremy Scott. Proofread. Read out loud. Read to your friends. Then try again.
Spoilers ahead:
Cliches - Let's get it out of the way, the following cliches were used in lieu of creative or emotional storytelling:
* A kid learns they have magical powers as they hit or near puberty.
* Protagonist just moved to a new town, and has concerns about fitting in.
* Protagonist has never had friends, but within a day at their new school they have besties for life /and/ a rival for life.
* A school for mutants. I'm sorry, for kids with magic. One more time, superpowers.
* A teacher or mentor gives a "grudging", heavily detailed info dump about the ancient, legendary, evil magic-user who was totally defeated and definitely won't be coming back as the big bad of this book.
* Prophecies.
* A magical cult/order/group assumed long gone is definitely still active, and recruits or attempts to recruit the protagonist.
* Origin of magical powers is - drum roll - ancient Western Europe! As if only white people can dole out destiny!
* "Roll Credits" - The CinemaSins term for when the title is dropped in the work.
* Defeat the leader and the rest of their evil army becomes a non-problem. Looking at you, Night King!
* A "game" which turns into a real conflict between Good and Evil. Looking at you, Goblet of Fire, Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.
* Characters discuss plans they already know solely for the thinly veiled benefit of informing the audience.
* A scarred, dapper, old, British dude is the villain.
* Villain monologuing.
* Villain oversharing, and then needing to silence the protagonists because they know too much.
* Dead mom/Coma.
*"Playing the Pronoun Game!" -A CinemaSins term for characters using pronouns (him, her, it) to discuss something very specific that they're all familiar with, and wouldn't discuss in such a cryptic way, but the author wants to "surprise" the audience with a reveal later.
* Cartoon physics.
* "There is no Good and Evil" villain speech.
* "You and I are a lot alike" villain speech.
* Author breaks their own rules of magic.
* "You better come take a look at this."
* Magical protagonist gains even more, hitherto untapped, magical powers just in time for the final boss battle.
* Another villain monologue, this time about how the hero has no real choices besides Their Own Death, Death of Many, or Death of All.
* "No capes!"
Ableism - I cringe bringing this one up, because it seems like a lot of genuine love went into writing a book where disabled children save the day. That's a moving premise, there isn't enough representation in fantasy/fiction, and there definitely aren't enough protagonists with disabilities.
The problem is that the differently abled children in this story are not represented /well/. In the same way that queer-baiting is promising a queer story, but delivering a minor character who behaves in a cliche manner, or black-baiting is promising a black story, but then delivering a minor character with no mention of dealing with racism, this book is a form of baiting: It promised a story about disabled superheroes, but delivered an over-sized cast whose disabilities were "corrected" instead of incorporated or ignored entirely.
* Phillip, the blind protagonist, gains sight through technology and the help of a fellow super friend. He uses his new-found sight, and some deductive reasoning, to defeat the enemy. His blindness was treated like a hindrance to cure, instead of a part of his person and a potential motivation for how to solve problems differently from his peers.
* Henry, the aforementioned super friend, is wheelchair-bound. His superpowers are mentally based: he can read minds, speak to people through thoughts, and plant whatever he sees into the minds of others. About midway through the book, Henry becomes Phillip’s prop, and is teleported, pushed, or otherwise wheeled around purely to give Phillip a view of his surroundings. This would have been a great opportunity for conflict: Henry could have resented being used like an accessory or a sidekick instead of a proper hero, and he could have resented the team for “able-ising” when he’s proud of his mobility in a wheelchair and proud of their representation as a differently abled team. Instead, Henry becomes not only a physical prop, but an emotional crutch, existing only to buoy Phillip’s spirits.
* Bentley, the brains behind Phillip’s newfound sight, has ataxic cerebral palsey. It comes up once or twice as he stumbles in excitement. But it never effects his ability to use tools/make inventions, climb trees, or thwart enemies. Bentley has a super brain, and can extrapolate data faster than your average person. It would have been an interesting conflict for Bentley to overcome: to see him frustrated when he can imagine the solution he needs, but can’t command his body to perform with the necessary grace/precision. Or, to see Bentley not frustrated at all, but rather optimistic and dogged; perhaps his friends would underestimate him, and it could have been a source of interpersonal conflict. Bentley is also the only hero who thinks the evil Mr. Finch might have some good ideas, pursuing a superhero with the gift of every superpower. It would have been nice if either his love of knowledge, or a frustration with the limits of physical/human abilities, led him to join the baddies.
* James, the blind teleporter, isn't supposed to be able to teleport to places he hasn't been to before, he needs the spatial/tactile familiarity to sense his destination. By the end of the book he can teleport to another city/state with only a verbal description of the place. His impediment was only an impediment... until it wasn't. Not as a sign of growth, but because the author wanted the plot to be able to move elsewhere. James has practically no dialogue in the book, and Phillip often forgets that James is with them. The audience does too, Phil. The audience does too.
*Freddie has asthma. He puffs on his inhaler like a chain smoker would a cigarette. Asthma medication is medicine: It’s not needed with every breath. It has dosage cycles, like any other medicine. If Freddie had an oxygen tank, and needed oxygen with every breath, that would have been a different matter, and scored another point for representation. A tangled oxygen tank, a punctured tank, a villain with fireballs making Freddie a flammable liability, all would have made for interesting conflicts. Even Freddie as an asthmatic could have had an asthma attack due to stress or exertion at any point. But nope, Freddie is a gimmick, a single description of a character tick which is repeated two dozen times and effects the plot not a jot. He runs from henchmen just fine, if you’re wondering.
* Patrick has ADHD. Until he doesn’t; he just shuts off his hyperactivity when he’s sad. Or he’s trying to be polite. Or he needs to be focused during a meeting. Flick, like a light switch.
My long-winded point being that no character’s disability is used as A) Motivation for how to address the plot differently from an able-bodied person, or B) A catalyst for conflict, or even C) A barely remarkable character trait like green eyes or red hair. Instead, every disability is a D for Defect, which gets “corrected” - be it in universe or because the author gets sloppy – over the course of the book.
Other Biases – I wish the list stopped there, I really do, but this book was problematic for other reasons.
* When the Black Hermione controversy came up, I realized I had brain blinders: I’m white, and when I would read books I would imagine the protagonist as white, until the author said otherwise. I realized that’s racist, there is no reason why white should be the default. Other people have different defaults; why couldn’t I make a conscious effort to imagine black protagonists, until informed otherwise? So, that’s what I’ve been striving to do… And about midway through this book, the characters were diverse in my head, until Phillip was surprised to finally see Henry, and realized he’s black. This jarringly informed me of two things: Phillip is not black, and in fact no one in this book – besides Henry – is a person of color. It was a let down that this book is about a bunch of super white boys, and it was an insult that blackness should be surprising.
* Speaking of boys… I have an extreme aversion to books without strong, female characters. I don’t like the old guard, boys club, around comics/games/high fantasy/sci fi/anime and manga, etc. Like girls don’t like superpowers? Or fights between Good and Evil? Or coming of age stories? If anything, the success and clamor for Wonder Woman, WandaVision, Captain Marvel, and the like, should tell you that girls are hungry for bad@$$ representation in superhero fiction. A giant cast of superpowered girls was introduced in this book, each given a paragraph of physical and supernatural details… Minus one, brief cameo at Halloween, NONE of the girls EVER reappear in this book! Not a single one helps to save the day! I was expecting a girl squad to crash into our boy wonders at some point, and team up Stranger Things style. I think in this day and age, when electives and careers aren’t as segregated as they used to be, it’s more likely that a group of kids rallies around a common interest, than a common gender. I expected our heroes to be more mixed.
* And speaking of genders… There is a moment when our heroes start to gain some notoriety at school, and Phillip remarks that he and the boys were tickled that the popular girls were flirting with them. Another shocking awakening for me: The cis bias. I had no reason to assume that all the boys would like female attention, but this author thinks I should. I had no reason to assume that an athletic, talkative girl in a short skirt is flirting, i.e. desires the sexual attention of the boy she’s talking to. But this author does! There is another line of Phillip’s, where he muses that he would like to turn invisible so that he can spy on girls changing, which underscores the problem further: “Boys will be boys” is archaic, dangerous, and foolish. Girls are not objects, and not every boy fetishizes girls, AND not every person is drawn to bodies over other traits.
Okay, getting off my soapbox now…
Mechanics and Lack of Art – But my last angst with this book are the mechanical problems! I am a very tough critic of children’s books, A) Because I studied how to write them, and B) Because I read a lot of them, and know what the genre’s capable of delivering. Just because it’s written for kids, doesn’t mean a book can’t have character arcs, themes or motifs, mature conversations or conflicts, metaphors, and/or tone… Apparently, Jeremy missed the memo. This book is severely lacking in dimension.
* The characters swap archetypes and personalities. Bentley is the brains and the leader. Until he isn’t, then Phillip takes charge, or is named leader. Phillip is a pessimist. Until he isn’t, and instead he’s a mediator who tries to encourage his friends. Henry is a pragmatist, and his brutal honesty makes others cringe. Until he isn’t, and he’s sentimental, talking Phillip back from making brutal decisions. These characters don’t grow in an arc, from one way of thinking to another. They flip-flop back and forth, round and round, for the entirety of the book.
* Some plot elements make leaps in logic. Why does Phillip assume what slowed them down in their first SuperSim were their disabilities, and not the fact that they had no clues to follow as to where the villains would be? Why does the SuperSim take place at night, across the town, when real criminals might be out at night, and some families still have naive family members (like Patrick) who shouldn’t see superheroes at work. How come James can teleport into, but not out of, the library? Why does Donnie disappear when he has ALL superpowers? Isn’t he an indestructible healer who can teleport? Why does Chad agree to have his arm cut off to get back at a kid he suckerpunched? Why does Finch kill Chelsey, the No Power Zone generator, when he needs an NPZ to keep his super hostages from escaping? Why does Phillip think the best way to fight a villain with fire powers is to pour gasoline? So many holes.
* The further on in the book, the more typos and grammatical errors. Things like, “It was a Monday during the fifth week of school.” Weeks only have one Monday each, so you wouldn’t have to say a Monday. Just say Monday. Just say Monday!
An over-expositional, heartless, meandering mess of a book, which insults its author and its audience. You’re better than this, Jeremy Scott. Proofread. Read out loud. Read to your friends. Then try again.