By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Maybe because I am sick of superheroes everywhere, but when the superhero's real life identity and problems are better written than their super identity and fights with villains, that's not a good sign.
That's the problem facing Daniel P. Riley's Legacy of Heroes. He gives us three interesting characters then puts them in a typical hero plot that is trite and leaves very few surprises or excitement.
The protagonists are three teenagers with different abilities. Dasani Watson suits up as the newest version of Paragon, as a tribute to the original hero who lost his life saving Dasani years ago. James Lassiter is followed by a demonic figure that hides in the shadows and is barely controlled by James. The third member is Amy Price AKA Shriek AKA Crescendo who was once a member of a supervillain gang but now uses her power of making sonic sounds for good when her old gang abandons her.
The three are assembled by Martin Lieberman, journalist and friend to the original Paragon. He wants to turn the trio into the latest superhero team to take on various villains like Amy's old gang and enemies of original Paragon's.
Individually the trio have some great moments that revealed their personal problems and struggles. They are actually more interesting in their conflicts with their placements and teen problems then they are with their fights against their super antagonists.
Dasani is still grief stricken over the deaths of his parents and of the original Paragon. Even though he only met Paragon once, it was such a monumental moment that changed his life forever. Living with his grandfather and struggling to take the role of his hero, gives Dasani a sense of reality of a world in which heroes are all too mortal and can't always be found in reality. Dasani has to look for the heroism within himself.
James has some pretty frightening passages with his companion, The Shadow Man. In a way, he is similar to someone with a severe mental illness like Paranoid Schizophrenia, PTSD, or Dissociative Identity Disorder. He can't always control his darker aspects. Sometimes it lives independently and does things that James is often against. The Shadow Man makes James feel isolated from his new friends.
Amy has to deal with leaving a toxic group and getting her life back in order. She was frequently abused and knew that she was only being used because of her abilities but as a runaway estranged from her parents she had few options. She is intimidated by the gang leaders, Comedy and Tragedy (called because they wear the comedy and tragedy theater masks). Amy isn't able to cut herself off from the gang until she is abandoned and found by James and Dasani. There she finds people who understand and accept her.
The trio start strong until the team heroics begin. There are some interesting costumes and characters that they face, notably Amy's old acquaintances Comedy and Tragedy. But they are lost to the typical plot points found in most superhero tales: the fights where they are overpowered, then come together stronger and united, the moment when one of the good guys gets kidnapped with their weaknesses exposed, the history between these new enemies and the good guy's mentor, and the twist of one of the villain's secret identity. Of course, the climactic ending reminds us that this is only the beginning. It's all regular and even boring with no new approaches to the plot. So much so that I forgot many of the plot angles almost as soon as I ended the book.
We've seen it all before and with the exceptions of the trio's individual backstories, the rest isn't really that super.
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