A review by trike
Black and White by Jackie Kessler, Caitlin Kittredge
3.0
I've had this book on my to-read pile for years. It's a pretty big pile.
Anyway, it gets 3 stars because I neither loved it nor hated it. The characters, plot and situations are all fairly generic, reflected by its generic title, but on the positive side the world-building is quite interesting and the writing is very good.
Some of the twists are tremendously obvious, but I liked how they treated the world as a given, without over-explaining the basics. The structure feels like a medieval Fantasy novel, where you're just thrown into it and expected to piece things together rather than have everything explained to you via infodump.
Overall, a solid entry in the superhero fiction genre. There is a sequel, which hopefully avoids the generic pitfalls of this one, but I suspect there will be more on the whole "good v. evil = black v. white" thing going on, since it's entitled [b:Shades of Gray|8534551|Shades of Gray (The Icarus Project, #2)|Jackie Kessler|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328338937s/8534551.jpg|6805695]. (Seriously ladies, try to come up with original titles. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a specific book with these titles? Maddening!)
Anyway, it gets 3 stars because I neither loved it nor hated it. The characters, plot and situations are all fairly generic, reflected by its generic title, but on the positive side the world-building is quite interesting and the writing is very good.
Some of the twists are tremendously obvious, but I liked how they treated the world as a given, without over-explaining the basics. The structure feels like a medieval Fantasy novel, where you're just thrown into it and expected to piece things together rather than have everything explained to you via infodump.
Overall, a solid entry in the superhero fiction genre. There is a sequel, which hopefully avoids the generic pitfalls of this one, but I suspect there will be more on the whole "good v. evil = black v. white" thing going on, since it's entitled [b:Shades of Gray|8534551|Shades of Gray (The Icarus Project, #2)|Jackie Kessler|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328338937s/8534551.jpg|6805695]. (Seriously ladies, try to come up with original titles. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a specific book with these titles? Maddening!)