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A review by dearanonymous
The Ables by Jeremy Scott
1.0
This book was a disappointment. I am not super familiar with CinemaSins, so I don't care about who the author is, but I was excited about the premise. Only a couple chapters in, I started wondering if this was a self-published book. Yup! The worst part is that if only Jeremy Scott had taken the time to get an agent and a proper editor with a real publishing house, this could have been an excellent book. The story itself is interesting, but he does an extremely mediocre job telling it, and there are a lot of flaws that could have been caught and fixed if he'd even had a friend who was good at proofreading. He clearly improved as a writer from the beginning of the book to the end, but didn't go back and do any serious editing.
I almost never review books, but I need to get a few things off my chest after reading this.
1. I have no idea who the target audience is. I know this guy has a Youtube channel and knew he could sell this book to rabid fans, but those fans are mostly adults. This book talks to its readers like they're children. There is no room to figure things out yourself because the book spends SO MUCH TIME telling you what every bit of dialogue meant. The cover says YA, the formatting says YA/Adult, but the writing says I should be about 10 years old.
2. Why is there a random Adult Phillip voice giving his two cents every once in a while? No one wants it. It's obnoxious and spoils how things are going to turn out right before they happen.
3. What 12 year old is going to ask his friends, "Whom should we get on our team?"
4.
5. Penelope walks around with them on Halloween. Plenty of people have already complained about the female representation, so I won't harp on that, but this girl is supposed to be intolerant of sunlight. I guess it was dark outside? It's never mentioned that she could come out because it's safe in the dark. She just showed up, complained to show how annoying those pesky girls are, attracted Bentley in a vaguely referenced way so that he wouldn't be in the next scene (but WHY?), and then walked out of the book forever.
6. Late in the book, Mrs. Crouch mentions that Darla is deaf and blind. Who is Darla? In his class is a Delilah Darlington who is deaf. Does she go by the nickname Darla because of her last name, or did the author forget her name and not bother to check? Because even I checked.
7. Formatting errors. Random bolding of a partial sentence and Part 4 looking like it's the last sentence of a chapter. Come on, guys!
8.
9.
In fact, I think the over-explanation of the desk is a good example of the writing style. Let's include it.
"Bentley, James, Freddie, and Patrick his in a classroom just down the hall from the prisoners and Finch's guards. The gang had moved the teacher's desk to a new position behind the door. The classroom door opened inward, and the desk now stood behind the door."
We get it. It's in a perfect location for me to *headdesk*
10 Freddie. I constantly forgot that Freddie existed. He didn't add anything to the story, and only spoke up every once in a while. He should have been replaced with one of the girls from class to better round out the characters.
11. Are all his friends 12? Is their entire special ed class 12? Are there multiple grades of it? Are there enough kids with special needs (because this book didn't use person-first language, but I will) in this small town of superheroes to populate six grades of special ed classes, or do our characters just happen to be the same age in a class that covers several grades or all 7-12th graders? This doesn't even count the question of why a lot of them aren't in normal classes anyway. They can't use their powers in school, so it's not like they should function any differently from a school of non-superpowered kids.
Okay, I've run out of steam.
Jeremy, get an editor and do this again, please. I would love to read an edited, re-released version of this in the future.
I almost never review books, but I need to get a few things off my chest after reading this.
1. I have no idea who the target audience is. I know this guy has a Youtube channel and knew he could sell this book to rabid fans, but those fans are mostly adults. This book talks to its readers like they're children. There is no room to figure things out yourself because the book spends SO MUCH TIME telling you what every bit of dialogue meant. The cover says YA, the formatting says YA/Adult, but the writing says I should be about 10 years old.
2. Why is there a random Adult Phillip voice giving his two cents every once in a while? No one wants it. It's obnoxious and spoils how things are going to turn out right before they happen.
3. What 12 year old is going to ask his friends, "Whom should we get on our team?"
4.
Spoiler
Chad regrows his arm twice. Once while tripping a bad guy in New York by getting "on his hands and knees" and again, importantly, by placing a hand on both Henry and Phillip to make them invisible at the end.5. Penelope walks around with them on Halloween. Plenty of people have already complained about the female representation, so I won't harp on that, but this girl is supposed to be intolerant of sunlight. I guess it was dark outside? It's never mentioned that she could come out because it's safe in the dark. She just showed up, complained to show how annoying those pesky girls are, attracted Bentley in a vaguely referenced way so that he wouldn't be in the next scene (but WHY?), and then walked out of the book forever.
6. Late in the book, Mrs. Crouch mentions that Darla is deaf and blind. Who is Darla? In his class is a Delilah Darlington who is deaf. Does she go by the nickname Darla because of her last name, or did the author forget her name and not bother to check? Because even I checked.
7. Formatting errors. Random bolding of a partial sentence and Part 4 looking like it's the last sentence of a chapter. Come on, guys!
8.
Spoiler
Phillip abuses Henry for the ability to see, and Henry is totally cool with it because Phillip is the only one who matters. Henry is 12. He does not have the willpower to stare at a computer screen while danger is happening all around him in the final scenes, just so Phillip can see and hopefully save the day.9.
Spoiler
Bentley climbs on a desk, lifts a flowerpot over his head, and jumps off a desk? Okay, sure. They only need to have disabilities when it's not inconvenient for the author. Also, they pushed a desk up against the door, which opened inward (as Scott spent way too much time telling us), so how did the "bad guys" as Phillip constantly calls them, open the door and get hit with flowerpots being held by the kids standing on that desk behind the door? What is happening here?In fact, I think the over-explanation of the desk is a good example of the writing style. Let's include it.
"Bentley, James, Freddie, and Patrick his in a classroom just down the hall from the prisoners and Finch's guards. The gang had moved the teacher's desk to a new position behind the door. The classroom door opened inward, and the desk now stood behind the door."
We get it. It's in a perfect location for me to *headdesk*
10 Freddie. I constantly forgot that Freddie existed. He didn't add anything to the story, and only spoke up every once in a while. He should have been replaced with one of the girls from class to better round out the characters.
11. Are all his friends 12? Is their entire special ed class 12? Are there multiple grades of it? Are there enough kids with special needs (because this book didn't use person-first language, but I will) in this small town of superheroes to populate six grades of special ed classes, or do our characters just happen to be the same age in a class that covers several grades or all 7-12th graders? This doesn't even count the question of why a lot of them aren't in normal classes anyway. They can't use their powers in school, so it's not like they should function any differently from a school of non-superpowered kids.
Okay, I've run out of steam.
Jeremy, get an editor and do this again, please. I would love to read an edited, re-released version of this in the future.