Scan barcode
A review by truthlessofcanada
Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This is how I believe this book was conceived.
Matthew Stover is probably one of the authors who has too many ideas to ever write in their lifetime, so what he did is he put all of the concepts he wanted to write a book about on slips of paper, and drew out 6 slips of paper randomly from a hat.
From this he got:
Portal fantast
dystopian society based on case systems
Movie star/celebrity main character
Most feared fighter in the world main character
Loe story
God emperor
Then he started writing a book and just included all of these, and it should have been terrible, but through some kind of black magic he managed to make the book with all of these like......Good
The way this book manages to juggle so many elements and make it feel that it is totally normal for all of these to fit together, and it is extremely impressive. It managed thematic coherence while juggling all that stuff at the same time. Also happens to have a pretty damn interesting main cast of characters, thrilling action, and an incredibly epic, and satisfying conclusion.
Oh, and the main character throws leg kicks at people, yay Muay Thai.
I have one major complaint though, that for me is a substantial point against the novel. There are a number of secondary antagonists in this story, and they get PoVs, and not an insignificant amount of them. All 3 of secondary antagonists were pretty rough to read, one of them especially. And by rough I mean both that they are terrible people, and also that they are pretty boring, flat, one note, uninteresting people, especially Berne.
Stover has an interview answer at the end of this book where he says he doesn't believe in evil, that it is a point of view, and nobody views themself as evil, and the interviewer is praising him for not just writing the protagonists as pure good, and the antagonists as pure evil. And he does do this for one antagonist, and the main characters
On the other hand he may have written the most irredeemably, unnuanced, pure evil character I have read. Berne manages to think about how excited he is to rape people in every single PoV he has(he probably has like 10 3-8 page PoV sections as a random guess), and often he does multiple times per PoV. There is nothing to respect about him, nothing to admire, no reason to sympathize, no common ground where I can see where he is coming from, he has not even the slightest, tiny twinge of complexity, humanity or depth. This ends up being a more significant con, because we don't spend an irrelevant amount of time in his point of view, he is probably the 4th most prominent character in this book.
Despite Bernes(and kinda 2 other minor antagonists who I have similar issues with narratively to a smaller degree) best efforts Heroes Die was awesome, incredibly interesting conceptually, thrilling and tense in execution, and with a satisfying conclusion. So despite a significant con, I still thought it was very good.
7.9/10
Matthew Stover is probably one of the authors who has too many ideas to ever write in their lifetime, so what he did is he put all of the concepts he wanted to write a book about on slips of paper, and drew out 6 slips of paper randomly from a hat.
From this he got:
Portal fantast
dystopian society based on case systems
Movie star/celebrity main character
Most feared fighter in the world main character
Loe story
God emperor
Then he started writing a book and just included all of these, and it should have been terrible, but through some kind of black magic he managed to make the book with all of these like......Good
The way this book manages to juggle so many elements and make it feel that it is totally normal for all of these to fit together, and it is extremely impressive. It managed thematic coherence while juggling all that stuff at the same time. Also happens to have a pretty damn interesting main cast of characters, thrilling action, and an incredibly epic, and satisfying conclusion.
Oh, and the main character throws leg kicks at people, yay Muay Thai.
I have one major complaint though, that for me is a substantial point against the novel. There are a number of secondary antagonists in this story, and they get PoVs, and not an insignificant amount of them. All 3 of secondary antagonists were pretty rough to read, one of them especially. And by rough I mean both that they are terrible people, and also that they are pretty boring, flat, one note, uninteresting people, especially Berne.
Stover has an interview answer at the end of this book where he says he doesn't believe in evil, that it is a point of view, and nobody views themself as evil, and the interviewer is praising him for not just writing the protagonists as pure good, and the antagonists as pure evil. And he does do this for one antagonist, and the main characters
On the other hand he may have written the most irredeemably, unnuanced, pure evil character I have read. Berne manages to think about how excited he is to rape people in every single PoV he has(he probably has like 10 3-8 page PoV sections as a random guess), and often he does multiple times per PoV. There is nothing to respect about him, nothing to admire, no reason to sympathize, no common ground where I can see where he is coming from, he has not even the slightest, tiny twinge of complexity, humanity or depth. This ends up being a more significant con, because we don't spend an irrelevant amount of time in his point of view, he is probably the 4th most prominent character in this book.
Despite Bernes(and kinda 2 other minor antagonists who I have similar issues with narratively to a smaller degree) best efforts Heroes Die was awesome, incredibly interesting conceptually, thrilling and tense in execution, and with a satisfying conclusion. So despite a significant con, I still thought it was very good.
7.9/10
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexism and Sexual violence