Goodnight is being pulled back into superheroing, despite
being officially retired.
But when pint-sized heroes Mish-Mosh and Psychopomp drop
in her lap, along with an instant chance to save the day, how could she not
form Team Tiny?! A superhero team wedded to Goodnight’s firm principle
Being a superhero should be fun! To Irene this is an
awesome game. Lives are at stake, some terrible people need stopping – but that
doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be fun as well!
I love the quirky super hero world which we’ve seen
through the lens of Penny Ack and her friends which has always been so much
zany fun. And after three books of that, this book is perfect to delve a little
behind all that
And lo we have this prequel which does this so perfectly
Going back several decades before Penny came on the scene
we get to see the wonderful origin stories of several of the most compelling
characters that loom large over the ongoing series. Not characters who are,
perhaps, most involved in the books, but ones whose legends truly shape them by
everyone knowing about them – like Mourning Dove. One of the good elements of
the original three books is that there isn’t a lot of explanation of things
that everyone knows- everyone knows about Mourning Dove so there isn’t really
any need to explain her other than have her presence shadow the book. That’s
well done. But it’s also awesome to see the origin behind that, the history and
how she developed
And also how the city developed and how Goodnight’s
visions of what super heroes and super villains should be and the whole wonderful
underpinning of this series – that super heroing can be fun. That there should
be rules, code of conduct, rules of engagement. That when super powerful beings
clash there needs to be some rules or everyone suffers
And it wasn’t just abstract – there was a really excellent metaplot on the consequences of, for example, heroes and villains targeting revealed identities, homes, families: how it not only gives heroes and villains downtime but how someone’s family being targeted makes them more and more desperate and more and more dangerous. And dangerous + super powers = terrible consequences.
Basically, this book took the whole underlying awesome
concept of this series – the idea that superheroing/villaining is a game, is
something that can be fun, is something that has rules and can be made fun and
zany (especially since so much of the superhero genre seems to be loving the
whole grimdark gritty) is not just maintained but explained. It’s not just
random quirkiness, there’s a real history, a real reality behind this. It has
taken what is a very zany, immensely fun, let’s-suspend-disbelief-and-run-with-it
world and given it far more powerful structure behind it
And I love that the need for rules now has a history, a reality and much more power because of this. While at the same time examining some other excellent themes: super powered beings who are not violently inclined. Super powered beings who look different and can’t have a civilian identity. Heroes and villains who can have friendly relationships outside of their work. But even with that how it can create difficulties because people do have radically different values because they are heroes or villains. Heroes who aren’t that much different from villains or are much more extreme than them.
This book also has the best depiction of someone cursed
with immortality I’ve seen in a long time – and the relationship between
Goodnight and Psychopomp is the very essence of bitter-sweet
This makes it all sound so serious – but it isn’t, not
even close. All these vital things are touched upon but the story is just fun,
endlessly fun and it’s a mark of how great the story is that all of these
things can be touched upon while still having a protagonist who is all about
joy and glee, who dedicates her life to making everyone around her have fun and
enjoy life, enjoy the game life can be. She’s an excellent character –
dedicated, kind, light, fun and genuinely good without being righteously
moralising. It’s so much fun, she’s so much fun and this whole book is a joy.
In terms of diversity, everyone is straight; there are
several POC (one of the prominent villains who joins them) and I think one of
the three major characters is a POC… but I think most of the actual major
characters are either completely non-human or so altered by their super powers
as to make it fairly impossible to examine what race they are. Like Goodnight,
our protagonist, who is alien, with Mayan roots and who constantly changes her
skin colour.
This book is a gem and a joy – just like this whole
series
