Story Spotlight #1 Defenders of Earth - Book 1: Bittersweet Reunions

To start off with, since this is a bit of a new thing I'm doing here, I'd like to explain what's going on right now. As I'm sure I've mentioned about six or seven billion times, I'm writing a novel. In this particular case, it doesn't really matter how much further in the future you're reading this or how known I may or not have gotten in time since writing, because I will always, always be writing a novel. At some point, I'll develop dementia and every time I sit down to start writing I'll have forgotten what I'd written before and probably never get anywhere anymore, but still. I will always be writing a novel. That's one status that never needs updating.

But anyway. I know how incredibly hard it can be one of the innumerable horde posting writing to the internet. I know firsthand the steady decline in ambition when you throw your work out there for all to see and no one so much as glances your way. Yeah, maybe you see the view count go up a hair every now and again, but really, no one seems to taking notice. No one makes note or comment of your existence. It sucks. I don't like that feeling, and I certainly wouldn't wish it on anybody else.

So to that end, I'm going to do my fellow unknown authors a bit of a service, and give them a shoutout. Fat lot of good that'll do them now, since at time of writing I'm pretty sure the only one who reads this blog is my wife. But whatever. It's the thought that counts.

Alright, that's enough explaining what I'm doing, time to start doing it. For the first ever Story Spotlight, I give you:

Defenders of Earth - Book 1: Bittersweet Reunionsby Fatal-Blow

The Defenders of Earth series is, by all impressions thus far, a snugly fit member of the superhero genre, one of my favorite genres of all time ever, so even going init had already scored points with me just by being about one of my favorite subjects. Which was good, but it definitely lost a point or two with it's title. Colonize if you want, but if you're going to colonize, please drop the "Book 1."

Anyway, the title can be forgiven for now, since the big function of a title is to draw new readers in and if you're hearing about this story from me instead of Fictionpress you obviously don't need the title to be directed to give this story a try. Makes sense? Good.  Now we can talk about more important things.

Defenders of Earth, as I've said, is a superhero story, chronicling the coming together of a group of teens who have all inherited superpowers from their biological parents, a group of genetically engineered superheroes who used to work for the government. The teens come from a very diverse range of backgrounds and locations, with many of them not even speaking the same language (though you'd be amazed at how many people in this story speak Wolf).

The one thing they all have in common though, is that they're all kids dealing with their powers. My favorite chapters in this story are easily the character spotlight and introduction ones, where the reader gets to walk in the shoes of the new character and see what it's like ti have any number of these abilities.

If you're like me and you're fairly well versed in comic books and comic book movies, you're going to notice some X-men parallels. There's a good guy with mental abilities recruiting the kids so he can help them deal with life and they've got a really swanky mansion, and there's a bad guy who the good guy used to know who's also recruiting for his own likely nefarious causes. Where I think the two IPs differ, at least importantly, is that the X-Men franchise has always been much more about asking the question of how the world would react to people with fantastic abilities (and also an allegory for LGBT rights if you're Bryan Singer, apparently. Totally missed that as a kid. But hey, I was like six when I saw those movies.). Which is a great question to ask and answer. Defenders of Earth, however, looks at things from a different angle and asks how the people with the powers react to having powers.

One complaint that I'm sure some may have will be that the actual plot does seem to be moving a bit sluggishly, at least so far in as chapter 10. I personally didn't mind too much, since there were a lot of characters being introduced in all of those chapters and I was just having a ball getting to meet them and then watch them interact with each other. Call it a character driven story I guess? I hear people like those.

So anyway, if you like superheroes, and if you like character centric writing, I think this might be worth a look for you. I know the author would be thrilled to get some feedback on what he (or she? It's the internet, it's kind of hard to be clear unless they come out and say it.) (...I'm a guy, by the way.) has out so far. So please, saunter on over. And tell 'em 003 sent ya. (You don't actually have to say that I sent you. Though I guess it'd be cool if you did.)

Anyway, I'm Agent 003, and this has been Story Spotlights.