Prelim Review: I grew up adoring superheroes. Barry Allen (Silver Age Flash) was my absolute hands down favorite of them all. I idolized him like most people idolized movie stars. He was Silver Age (50's/60's/70's) of comics, in the 90's, when I began branching out I stumbled upon Alex Ross and Mark Waid's epic [b:Kingdom Come|93338|Kingdom Come|Elliot S. Maggin|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328005937s/93338.jpg|43059188].

It changed how I viewed heroes rather profoundly.

This too has changed how I view certain aspects of being a hero. I read very 'hero' books in which the characters have a kid. Sometimes it'll happen, but almost never did I stick with a series (or character) long enough to watch that kid grow up. I didn't consider how it must be on either side of the equation, the helplessness both sides feel, the uncertainty of what could happen at any moment. Its not really that different from regular parents or kids who's parents are in law enforcement (like cops or fire fighters), but there's a stark difference between the Joker and Joe Schmo bank robber.

I wish that we could have seen more flashbacks of Celia's childhood. The brief interludes did a lot to sort of bridge the gap between the Celia of now and the Celia who was then. I'll tell you one thing, the memory of her at two years old had me practically crying it was sad...heart-wrenchingly so.

I was captivated by this story. It held me engrossed as I watched how the completely ordinary daughter of the world's greatest heroes struggled to come to terms with herself. Whether Celia truly felt reconciled to the fact that she was merely normal, especially after the past reveals how involved her family has been from the very beginning, is left up in the air. I don't think by the end of it she felt bitter that she wasn't the Golden Child her parents had wanted. And they weren't the heroes everyone saw them as. It was hard for her to reconcile that the most--the world kept telling her 'Your parents are heroes. They're like Gods.' and to her they were just Mom and Dad, adults who let her down more often then she liked.

There's a little romance throughout, and anyone with braincells will be able to see how things turn out for Celia, but I was more interested in how everyone around her reacted when her secret came out. In one memorable rant after it comes out, Celia demands to know if she is any different then she was before:

[Celia]"..How many times do I have to say it: I've spent the last eight years trying to make up for one mistake, and the only message I'm getting is that isn't possible. Yesterday I was a respectable upstanding citizen, and today, suddenly, I'm dirt...what the hell happened?"



[Analise]"How do I know you won't do something like that again?" (pg. 139)

That interchange, about halfway through the book, sums up something important I think. Never mind heroes vs. villains, everybody faces this. You can spend your entire life as the good kid and one mistake, one misstep, and that's something know one will forget. After the Golden Age, the title in and of itself I think refers to this. There's the Celia before The Incident, the Celia who tried her best but couldn't live up to her parents' expectations, when there was still the chance she could be so much more.

Then there's the Celia after The Incident, who couldn't fully reconcile with her parents, who felt inadequate next to almost everyone around her. She wasn't alone though. It wasn't touched upon directly, but through the flashes of time from Celia's childhood and beyond we kind of see that her parents weren't just disappointed in her lack of superpowers, but weren't sure how to deal with her because of it. Its fairly typical when a family is so devoted to one certain aspect--sports, the arts, music--and is confronted with a child with no aptitude. How do they relate? How do they treat that kid? It must have been worse for the Wests since the added burden that Celia couldn't protect herself--physically at least--like they could.

I'll discuss the romance only briefly, because its not a big deal of the book. The connection is the draw, the force behind it. Through her connection with the her love interest she feels understood. Not perfect or a disappointment, but a flawed human being stumbling around trying to find her way. Its a little heavy-handed at times, especially after the Incident is publicly known, but effective. I wish she had this same feeling with someone else--Analise maybe, who I can't quite forgive for being so judgmental of Celia's past.

And the ending...well. There was tears. I don't think we needed the extra 'and this is what happened' bit after the confrontation, but the confrontation was almost perfect to my mind whether you are a comic fan or not. It had the big life or death plot, but very real consequences and emotions that took center stag ( )

I read this on the commute home... and kept reading it... and then stayed up until midnight to finish the book. The plot was slightly clichéd but executed in a fresh way. I really liked Cecelia, and loved that she, the normal one in a family of superheroes, was the main character. ( )

This story relies on some typical superhero comic tropes, such as a city that seems to be separate from the world at large, and supers wear masks even when their identities were revealed pre-story. You just accept those as background.

Overall, this is a pretty good story. Overall, it's tolerably well written or I wouldn't/couldn't have finished it. But I don't consider it a romance because much of the story has nothing to do with the ultimate pairing. This is a story about the normal kid of super-powered parents learning how to adult and doing it well but not being recognized for that. First half's kinda boring, second half is better. To the author's credit, there is a certain 'things not said' quality which often saved a scene.

I liked how Celia's story played out. Ultimately that's where the stars were earned - she seems boring but she isn't, and I trusted the author just enough to learn that. However, quite a lot of her actions and reactions read a little flat, a little distanced. That coupled with the wrap-ups in the last chapter made this novel seem less its own story and more set-up for the second book. I own it. I'll eventually see if I'm right.

But I'm not in a rush as I suspect that distancing is just this author's way. (Also right now my 'currently reading' list is ten books, and that's too much competition for this kind of writer. ) ( )

Most writing in superhero mythology paints the heroes as larger than life, more powerful than we could hope to be...gods among us, if you will...swooping in when all hope seems lost to fight the evil that we could never fight ourselves. The heroes are distant, aloof most often, typically because their position and power has left them that way, too far separated by definition from those that they pledge to defend...or, in the case of the villains, attempt to enslave. Due to their power, they can never be like us, and understand the obligation that comes with that power.

The better writing in superhero mythology explores the heroes' struggle with that power, with a destiny that has often been thrust upon them by forces outside of themselves. They take up the mantel of defender because they have no other option. With great power, Uncle Ben reminds us, comes great responsibility.

The best writing in superhero mythology steps back from this, though, and remembers what the heroes truly are: people like the rest of us, but choosing to use what they have been given for good. Aliens, perhaps, or mutants, but still touched by a common thread of humanity that leads to a driving impulse to preserve life. Our heroes find common ground with us, even when they are so much larger than us.

There are a few explorations of the people behind the masks that are original enough to cause us to re-examine what lies behind their heroic natures, a handful that are memorable enough to, while not re-defining of a genre, certainly motivation to re-examine a genre. Somewhat out of the blue, Carrie Vaughn, a self-proclaimed lover of comic books and superheroes, has done exactly that, and done so with an interesting starting point: what if these huge, larger-than-life, indestructible heroes were but a blip in the history of heroism? What if their self-sacrificial desire to place the good of others, of their cities, before themselves were not tied to their superhuman abilities, but rather merely better facilitated by them? Wouldn't that make them even greater heroes?

And wouldn't that widen the definition of who we consider to be a hero, and what we consider heroism to be?

Vaughn's protagonist, Celia West, is the daughter of the greatest superheroes that Commerce City has known. Her parents formed a team known as the Olympiad, fittingly titled protectors who watch the city from on high and strike hard against evil. Yet, she is born with no abilities, and lives in the shadow of superhuman parents whose superhuman nature has exacted a toll on their family life. Celia fights for good in her own way, however, in her role as an accountant of all things, with the same determination and passion to right wrongs that her parents hold, without all of the grandiose battles and conflicts. Yet, she is constantly compared to them, constantly made to appear to fall short...and constantly haunted by the one mistake for which she will seemingly find no forgiveness, despite her attempts to make her repentance felt.

Vaughn pays homage to the superhero tales of our youth in an offhandedly humorous but deeply respectful way that demonstrates her love for the tradition, gently touching stereotypes with the love of genre conventions without ever making anything seem unbelievable or silly. Her characters stay with you, her succinct prose and thought-provoking dialogue leave the reader with the moments that define a great book: the moments when you have to put the book down and walk away to digest what it is you've just read. Vaughn isn't just de-constructing classic superhero story arcs here, she's using the mythology to examine much larger questions: destiny vs. free will, the nature of a hero in each of us, the driving impulses behind self-sacrificing behaviors. She's questioning what it means to be a hero from every angle, and disabusing us of many of the notions that we have held with conviction up to this point. The heroes that are most visible, we realize, perhaps aren't the greatest heroes after all, but are merely following in the footsteps of heroes that are greater, and more normal, than we might otherwise imagine, heroes whose convictions were stronger than their powers.

This is the first novel I've read from Vaughn, and I'm impressed. The pacing is fluid, the story accessible and only minimally predictable. On the rare occasion in which I found myself suspecting that something didn't fit, she made it fit within a few pages. Vaughn has done something fascinating with superhero culture here, something redemptive in it's own right. If you grew up in love with these heroes as I did, this is a novel that will broaden the way you think. If you didn't, you might just find yourself falling in love with the genre for the first time, because it is accessible to everyone in Vaughn's prose.

In fact, of all the legacy that this book is likely to leave, that may well be its greatest.

An easy read at just under 400 pages, I recommend this novel for anyone.

( )

4 1/2 stars

A definite page turner. What would it be like to have superhumans as parents? Definitely not as thrilling, exciting or joyful as the public seems to think. Celia West finds herself having to plot her own course around kidnappings, her parents' fame and her own desire to just have a normal life.

Haven't read such an interesting take on the superhero genre since reading Minister Faust's [bc:From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain|27799|From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain|Minister Faust|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320492465s/27799.jpg|28396]. Well done. ( )