I love this book.

I love this book so much, that one part of this review will hurt to write. I’m at the same time thrilled with it and also horrified and disappointed.

There’s a little background that people who don’t care about analyzing their literature can skip. The author, Perry Moore, had a problem with how gay characters were portrayed in comic books. He had a good reason to feel this way, which can be read about in Who Cares About the Death of a Gay Superhero, Anyway?. I don’t read comics, so all of this is out of context of the source material, but compiled together is pretty startling. So it’s safe to say that Perry Moore was on a mission: he wanted to write a book with a teenage protagonist that could be looked up to by teen readers, a realistic handling of what it meant to be a gay superhero. Mostly, I think he succeeds.

Hero is about Thom, and how Thom comes to grips with his superpowers and his sexuality. Thom is wonderful; he’s a kid, having to face tough choices, secrets he has to handle alone, and like a lot of kids, forced to deal with his own issues as well as the issues his parents leave behind. In a lot of places it reads like a first novel, the pacing sometimes reminds me of the feeling you get when stepping off a particularly rickety carnival ride and the editing could have used a sharper eye especially in the parts where Thom is listing off superhero aliases like they’re B.F.F. but then states he doesn’t know them, but overall I thought it was an good debut. I do think people who like comics should give it a chance and people who don’t like comics to also give it a chance and then come discuss it with me (what? I never said I wasn’t greedy).

The book is predictably about coming out, but it’s not all about the gay issue. I actually liked that Moore weaved the theme of exposing secrets and the inner self along with Thom’s literal coming out re: sexuality into all the characters and the stories. I love father/son issues (or father/daughters, really, only one of the elements in required) and Moore delivers on this over and over. I would argue that it’s not just a book about Thom finding himself, a book about Thom Creed, but a book about Hal Creed, too. There’s just such affection and love between Thom and Hal, and I just ate it up. It was so well-done, they both grow and change so much, and the most important part for me, help each other grow and change. I would recommend this book to anyone who simply likes parent/child dynamics, because I think Moore hits it out of the park. It was my favorite aspect of the novel, even though it hurt, hurt, hurt (in the good way). Especially this:

I reached out to hug him, and the minute I stepped toward him I knew it had been a grave mistake.

He winced and pushed my hands away.

Without meeting my eyes, he turned his back on me and walked out [...] with strong, even strides.

Warning: this quote wields knives, metal knuckles and a whip when read in context. Just saying.

Moore creates some really fabulous characters, but Thom and Hal’s relationship really is what made me love the book so much, even though the plot is interesting and the mystery tangled enough that it wasn’t completely obvious what was going on. I enjoyed the all the mysteries, one easy to figure out and the other two so-so; I’m not one who tries to figure things out before the main character, but someone who reads a lot of mystery probably could. I hate discovering the villain before the main character does. All these things, Thom and his father, Thom’s team, the backdrop characters made this book fabulous for me. The whole package evened out for me half-way through (I note this by the number of remark slips I have at the beginning—there’s like 37).

Also, there are boys kissing! The romance was totally cute and face-palm worthy (in a good way) and you just can’t help but grin and cheer for it. It’s pretty painful in some places—a teenage heart scorned is a dangerous weapon, but I love how Moore weaved it in and followed through. Boys kissing! Yay!

I never said I wasn’t predictable. :D

The novel ties in the superheroes in interesting ways. I’ve admitted I’m not big on comic books, but some of the allusions and references to superheroes we know were so obvious that even someone not schooled in them would recognize personas that Moore borrowed (thank you pop culture). I found it really interesting the lines Moore drew between Thom’s team—made up of a healer, a clairvoyant, a guy with super speed, a girl with literal fire power and a dude that can make people sick on demand—and some of the other superheros, who were all seemingly well-off and flashy. I found it really interesting that he made a conscious point to tackle some of the class issues and have Thom notice them. It makes sense because of Thom’s background, but totally miss the point on gender/heterosexual relationships? It’s not that Moore didn’t make a statement on those (I believe he did, but whether it was conscious or not remains to be seen) but I was just boggled he paired classism with homophobia outright.

My only problem with the resolution is that almost Moore deus-ex-machina’s himself to death in the final act, and then makes some ridiculous choices (from a story-telling perspective) that I can only figure out in terms of, “dude wants more money, dude sells out, dude gets gets another novel deal, $$$$$”. The story ends with a bang and then a bow around the charred remains. And while this is awesome for Perry Moore, and he gets to sit around writing more sequels, as a reader I feel kind of cheated because being a hero should have consequences, dammit. This is the same way I felt when I learned the ending of Final Fantasy X-2.

Take from that what you will.

The rest of this entry is filled with spoilers for the characters, superhero identities, the plot and the ending of the book!

I think Hero is a delightful novel overall, except for those issues Moore seems to ignore. The only problem is, I don’t believe he did ignore them and I think in his mission to write a novel where the gay character didn’t have to die a horrific death or suffer horrible, heart-breaking agony at the hands of straight characters who go on to be the heroes, he managed to shoot himself in the foot with his own message. It’s really nothing overt, and it didn’t ruin the novel for me at all; this isn’t a “don’t read this novel!” caveat — but Moore did state he had a goal with this novel in interviews, and what I found under the surface of his novel really bothered me. It was just there after I finished, after I started thinking about over things. I don’t like the message Moore decided to send about heterosexual relationships or gender. He does touch on race; he has two non-white characters and a hero who is decidedly “other” — but all three of these characters are powerful superheroes in their own right. I do wonder about the decision for Justice (formerly Right Wing) to name a rogue hero “Dark” Hero — ha ha, is that social commentary, Moore? Perry Moore is aware of race; he has Goran, Kevin, Justice, and Ruth comment on it. He has four interracial couples, two of them in the foreground, one I loved! A lot. Moore is aware of race, but I think in his hurry to boost up his gay champion and not piss off POC (and who knows, he may have done, since I’m not able to fully comment on that) he stomps all over two other groups. At best, Moore is thoughtless and writing in his white-male vacuum, gay or not. At worst, he’s a hypocrite who boosted up his own social message while stomping down on a multitude of others.

When I put Hero down and started thinking about it, I started thinking about the characters — and really, I loved most of the characters. When I started connecting characters together in my head I noticed a trend. I noticed it with female characters first; how Moore portrays all female characters, how female characters become secondary, how the male characters constantly devalue female characters for good or until it’s too late, and how female characters embody certain stereotypes. Women’s work, basically. Ruth teaches Thom how to better apply, understand and use his powers, helps him understand the empathetic side — the teacher. Scarlett ends in the off-screen role of primarily responsible for her sick mother — caregiver. Then there’s Thom’s mother, and I could write a lot about her. She joined the League, had potential, and in the scene with Thom where she’s explaining her past, her work with the League and her work and eventual romantic relationship with Hal and subsequent pregnancy, she actually says:

” [...] there wasn’t much question about which one of us would step down. Your father was the world’s biggest hero. I was still second rate at best. [...] But don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled to step down. I had gotten what I wanted: your father.”

This woman, who has the power of invisibility, is basically owning up to the fact that she joined the League and trained up in order to get the superhero version of an MRS degree.

Really, Perry Moore? Really?

When I read this, warning bells went off all over my brain. It doesn’t help matters much that she hints about outright abandoning her son and husband to shack up with Justice, and when that fails, skulks around “watching over” Thom until she finds a use for him — helping kill the other side of her failed affair. Logically, I know that women can choose to start a family, but it was just how she phrased it. Needless to say, she’s not a good role-model for Thom, but at least he seems to realize it. But it’s just one of the huge issues I had with the female characters. Ruth I could love a little more: she owned her flaws. Scarlett I liked until the last chapter, when Moore scraps together a final act by summarizing how Thom changes Scarlett’s life:

• He heals her of her cancer
• so she can be a normal woman/superhero
• and she and Kevin can have crazy hot sex without embarrassment
• and apparently so she can start popping out babies.

Yes! Moore writes a novel in which Thom (A MALE CHARACTER) heals one of the female characters so she can operate at top-level, only to knock her up in the closing pages so she can come full circle in her caregiver role and Ruth can be immortalized. It actually ties into how heterosexual relationships are portrayed, too — Kevin and Scarlett can’t simply have a relationship without babies? There has to be that last dig at Scarlett’s female power, basically saying, “your power is to spawn now.”? The other heterosexual relationships portrayed where just as dire. Hal and Lila split because Lila leaves Hal for Justice, who discovers Justice is kind of crazy so she leaves him, and then seeks revenge on him using her son by another man. Ruth’s first romance is disturbed because of the interracial quality and then the second by violence, but she still doesn’t have a happy ending. None of the heterosexual relationships in this book have a happy ending except for Scarlett and Kevin, and of course for theirs to end happily, apparently they have to HAVE BABIES.

I shake my fist at you, Perry Moore! I shake it!

Yes, I had problems with Hero, because I loved that Moore wanted to make a statement, but then got really disappointed when he did because I think he made the wrong ones inadvertently. I do believe there can be balance — the proper response to wanting to write a novel where gay characters aren’t killed, but celebrated, and not just because they’re gay is not to write a novel where female characters and heterosexual couples have to take a beating. I still love this novel, even though it’s a glorious mess in some parts and in some of it’s underlying messages. I think that Moore has a lot of potential, but I really hope these things don’t become themes in his work and he learns how to spread his message of equality with a little more balance.

1. Rat’s Reading
2. LiyanaLand!
3. things mean a lot
4. Tower of Books