Product Description

A party in a college flat in May 2001, a case of dodgy home-brewed beer, a violent storm. Next day: the mother of all hangovers. What would you do if the morning after the night before brought a banging head, a raging thirst...Oh, and your very own superpower? Meet the all-stars: Harriet (invisibility), Charlie (the ability to read minds), Caroline (flight), Mary-Beth (super-strength) and Jack (faster than a speeding...well, you know). Determined to become costumed crime-fighters, but baffled by the lack of super-villains to tackle, the quintet soon finds that the ramifications of their new powers are more complicated than they anticipated, and that humans (even themselves) are much more fragile than they'd realised. And all the while the clock ticks down to one day in September 2001.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139693 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Times
`witty and charming debut ... an adult novel but teenagers of 14+ will enjoy it'

About the Author
David J. Schwartz works as a librarian in Chicago. His fiction has received an Honorable Mention in 2004's YEAR'S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR, and been shortlisted for the Speculative Literature Foundation's 2004 Fountain Award, and has appeared in The Third Alternative, Strange Horizons, Talebones and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet.

Customer Reviews

With Great Power...
'Superpowers' is a comic book but without any pictures, which frankly ought not to work but thanks to David J. Schwartz's fast moving prose, it does. Five college students wake up one morning and discover that they have acquired various (and typical for the genre) superpowers. Unlike many superhero tales 'Superpowers' does not rely on Good Vs Evil to drive its plot. Indeed, the novel's central message is that good and evil largely depends on perspective.

'Superpowers' explores the moral obligations of those imbued with supernatural ability in a far more effective way than having Tobey 'Spiderman' Macguire banging on about 'great power coming with great responsibility' every five seconds. The attempts of Schwartz's characters to come to terms with their powers and their responsibilities is very well actualised and extremely human.

Schwartz also tackles, with great sensitivity, humanity's failings and the feelings of inadequacy we all feel from time to time. By using, larger superpowered examples, he offers us a microscope with which to look at our own motives and ambitions. As the tension in the novel builds, real world events also impact on the group, distorting their world view even further. Their response, is an excellent (if thinly veiled) metaphor for the American led response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

All in all, I found 'Superpowers' to be a very satisfying read. The novel is well paced and manages to be describe the supernatural and yet remain believable. Excellent stuff.

Not quite a supernovel
This book tells the story of five US college students who inexplicably acquire superpowers overnight, following a heavy session on the homebrew. The novel focuses on how the individuals come to terms and utilise their new gifts of super strength, speed, flight, invisibility and telepathy.
This is in the 'Heroes' mould and may appeal to fans of that show; having said which, neither this novel nor 'Heroes' treads very new ground - superheroes have, of course, been struggling to come to terms with their gifts/curses for decades in comic books.
The plot, such as it is, is quite thin; without givng the storyline away, the novel looks at the difficulty of being a hero and doing good, exposing the limitations of superpowers in sorting the world out.
I would recommend this to anyone drawn by the subject matter, as it's a quick and light read. I do wish, though, that Schwartz had let his characters (and readers) have a bit more fun with those superpowers, instead of cutting almost immediately to the anguished motif of 'it's no cakewalk being a superhero'.

Not the greatest novel but quite entertaining
I like comic books and books, TV shows and movies about heroes, like most of my generation, I have grown up with super-heroes movies and I when I saw the book I was curious about how the author was going to develop the idea, that was both simple and attractive.
It is the usual beginning for a comic book, five college students, let's say, five friends, each one with their issues and background stories of sorrow and pain, get super powers and try to help a world that is amazed and fears them.
It has some very good points, showing us the human side of these heroes, how they get to terms with what they are living, the author doesn't make the mistake of going all the way with the comic book genre, and has some brilliant moments, like when they get together to decide whether they will be superheroes or not.

The book is told by a "journalist" that gives his point of view all the time and the chapters are short, easy to read and fast.
Even if you don't love comics or haven't read one in your life, the author explains everything in a simple way. It is not a challenging book but a fairly entertaining one.