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A review by ninjamuse
Aces Abroad by Leanne C. Harper, Michael Cassutt, Victor Milán, Gail Gerstner-Miller, Edward Bryant, Melinda M. Snodgrass, John J. Miller, Walton Simons, George R.R. Martin, Richard Kriegler, Stephen Leigh
1.0
In brief: A group of celebrity aces, jokers, and politicians take a world tour to see how the powers and mutations of wild card virus have affected countries other than the U.S. Fourth in a series.
Thoughts: This is this year’s first and hopefully only example of things not to do in fiction—and I’m not just talking about the stuff in my warning below. I also mean the whole premise of the book and the way it was executed in terms of narrative structure. It just totally flopped for me and I was seriously glad to be done with it.
Okay, warning stuff first: I’m not going to list everything. I cannot list everything without making my someone’s brain melt. The biggest things, though, are the sheer male gaze of the book and the well-meaning but utter failure to be culturally inclusive. POC and their cultures are reduced to stereotypes at every turn—the Muslim characters are extremist terrorists, the Japanese section revolves around the sex trade, etc.—and the writers are clearly trying to show positive characters and the positive impact of superpowers, but 30 years on, those bits read like a weird version of the white saviour. “Superpowers would totally allow the Maya to successfully revolt. Aren’t we nice to let them?”
I also got a voyeur vibe through a lot of this book, partly because of the white saviour/male gaze stuff and partly because of the related issue of, well, it’s either shoddy research or a genuine inability to find stuff out, and I’m betting on the former. The world tour feels very surface level, which ties into the premise of the junket, which is a very surface kind of thing, but I kept finding myself thinking I was seeing a lot of common knowledge stuff, not a lot of depth or difference. We go to Rio, we see slums and street crime. We go to Paris, there are street cafés and cigarettes and ex-lovers. I’d say modern novels and the internet have spoiled me, but there are less weird and offensive novels also published in the 1980s so.
(Would someone mind taking this premise and redoing it for the 21st century? I’d love to see a global take on superpowers that actually, y’know, tackles the superpowers and mutations within cultural contexts, rather than largely saying that a character’s an ace or a joker and not exploring them further than a label. And, um, not being offensive about it.)
Then there’s the structure, or more specifically, the almost lack of it. The world tour ties things together loosely, as does the diary of the one of the characters on the trip*, and there are a few subplots that thread through the story, but this feels way more like short stories in a shared world than the others in the series have to me, or at least those ones have had frame stories that wove the short pieces in better. This felt, ultimately, like a filler novel. Things had to be put into place for book five, so book four exists to get them there. It doesn’t help that the pacing is off and there’s an almost total lack of momentum towards the climax. It just kind of … happens, without much in the way of foreshadowing or payoff.
That said, some of the things the writers set up for the next book or maybe two, I do want to see resolved. A couple new villains show up, for instance. One of the politicians has a chance at greater things. I will probably read the next book at some point, if only to get that payoff, but also because I’m just slightly superhero novel trash and am hoping Aces Abroad is an aberration in the series. I’ll definitely be reading at least as critically as I ended up this time ‘round though, and if the quality doesn’t increase, I might have to call it quits on the series, or at least the older books in it, continuity be damned.
Regardless, I do not, in any way, recommend you read this book. You’re going to waste a week of reading time, same as me.
* Honestly, if he’d narrated the whole book, I’d have been more engaged. He was smart and perceptive and willing to look past his biases.
3/10
To bear in mind: The writers have not met an offensive trope or characterization they didn’t then include, and just when you think they’ve hit their low point, they find a new one. Proceed with caution unless you’re a straight white male, and even then, think critically and read with awareness.
Thoughts: This is this year’s first and hopefully only example of things not to do in fiction—and I’m not just talking about the stuff in my warning below. I also mean the whole premise of the book and the way it was executed in terms of narrative structure. It just totally flopped for me and I was seriously glad to be done with it.
Okay, warning stuff first: I’m not going to list everything. I cannot list everything without making my someone’s brain melt. The biggest things, though, are the sheer male gaze of the book and the well-meaning but utter failure to be culturally inclusive. POC and their cultures are reduced to stereotypes at every turn—the Muslim characters are extremist terrorists, the Japanese section revolves around the sex trade, etc.—and the writers are clearly trying to show positive characters and the positive impact of superpowers, but 30 years on, those bits read like a weird version of the white saviour. “Superpowers would totally allow the Maya to successfully revolt. Aren’t we nice to let them?”
I also got a voyeur vibe through a lot of this book, partly because of the white saviour/male gaze stuff and partly because of the related issue of, well, it’s either shoddy research or a genuine inability to find stuff out, and I’m betting on the former. The world tour feels very surface level, which ties into the premise of the junket, which is a very surface kind of thing, but I kept finding myself thinking I was seeing a lot of common knowledge stuff, not a lot of depth or difference. We go to Rio, we see slums and street crime. We go to Paris, there are street cafés and cigarettes and ex-lovers. I’d say modern novels and the internet have spoiled me, but there are less weird and offensive novels also published in the 1980s so.
(Would someone mind taking this premise and redoing it for the 21st century? I’d love to see a global take on superpowers that actually, y’know, tackles the superpowers and mutations within cultural contexts, rather than largely saying that a character’s an ace or a joker and not exploring them further than a label. And, um, not being offensive about it.)
Then there’s the structure, or more specifically, the almost lack of it. The world tour ties things together loosely, as does the diary of the one of the characters on the trip*, and there are a few subplots that thread through the story, but this feels way more like short stories in a shared world than the others in the series have to me, or at least those ones have had frame stories that wove the short pieces in better. This felt, ultimately, like a filler novel. Things had to be put into place for book five, so book four exists to get them there. It doesn’t help that the pacing is off and there’s an almost total lack of momentum towards the climax. It just kind of … happens, without much in the way of foreshadowing or payoff.
That said, some of the things the writers set up for the next book or maybe two, I do want to see resolved. A couple new villains show up, for instance. One of the politicians has a chance at greater things. I will probably read the next book at some point, if only to get that payoff, but also because I’m just slightly superhero novel trash and am hoping Aces Abroad is an aberration in the series. I’ll definitely be reading at least as critically as I ended up this time ‘round though, and if the quality doesn’t increase, I might have to call it quits on the series, or at least the older books in it, continuity be damned.
Regardless, I do not, in any way, recommend you read this book. You’re going to waste a week of reading time, same as me.
* Honestly, if he’d narrated the whole book, I’d have been more engaged. He was smart and perceptive and willing to look past his biases.
3/10
To bear in mind: The writers have not met an offensive trope or characterization they didn’t then include, and just when you think they’ve hit their low point, they find a new one. Proceed with caution unless you’re a straight white male, and even then, think critically and read with awareness.