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A review by upbeatmetaphor
Seven Wonders by Adam Christopher
3.0
When I first started reading Seven Wonders I was struck with the horror that I may have accidentally picked up another police procedural novel. Thankfully that wasn't the case, and while some of the rich cast of characters were indeed police officers and detectives, it was actions in the narrative that defined character, not job roles or background.
There's a major change of direction at the middle of the book, and I think I made the mistake of pausing there, and didn't much feel like coming back. Yes, properties and characters from the first half of the book return and carry on through to the end, but the story is so different from that point that it almost feels like two separate books.
The characters are all deep, believable and well written, but the changes they undergo are quite instant instead of gradual. As such they have no real grand narratives, so it's hard to look back from the end of the book to the start in a "how far we've come" sort of way.
Seven Wonders perfectly captures the inconstant nature of human (or indeed alien) decision. We like to think that we would use superpowers for good, or that some might use them for evil, but the truth is those decisions would exist only momentarily, until we made our next good/evil choice. There are no heroes or villains, just a constant procession of decisions.
Thematically the book is a lot like a DC Comics story arc, with broad, strong archetypal characters and a preference for spandex over armor. Just like DC, nothing seems to go as the characters would hope or intend, and ultimately solutions present themselves a bit too conveniently, though not before a coming together for a massive roll call. I'm a sucker for a roll call.
I look forward to reading more Adam Christopher, and hope he explores character and human decision as realistically in his other books.
Nick
xx
There's a major change of direction at the middle of the book, and I think I made the mistake of pausing there, and didn't much feel like coming back. Yes, properties and characters from the first half of the book return and carry on through to the end, but the story is so different from that point that it almost feels like two separate books.
The characters are all deep, believable and well written, but the changes they undergo are quite instant instead of gradual. As such they have no real grand narratives, so it's hard to look back from the end of the book to the start in a "how far we've come" sort of way.
Seven Wonders perfectly captures the inconstant nature of human (or indeed alien) decision. We like to think that we would use superpowers for good, or that some might use them for evil, but the truth is those decisions would exist only momentarily, until we made our next good/evil choice. There are no heroes or villains, just a constant procession of decisions.
Thematically the book is a lot like a DC Comics story arc, with broad, strong archetypal characters and a preference for spandex over armor. Just like DC, nothing seems to go as the characters would hope or intend, and ultimately solutions present themselves a bit too conveniently, though not before a coming together for a massive roll call. I'm a sucker for a roll call.
I look forward to reading more Adam Christopher, and hope he explores character and human decision as realistically in his other books.
Nick
xx