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SINNER
Superheroes and villains defy physics, hold nations hostage, grandstand and punch one another... until the day one of the worst turns himself in. Hector 'Sinner' Lear, matter-disintegrating terror of the Night Syndicate crime league, walks into a police station and submits to cops who couldn't catch him, voluntarily entering a prison that could never hold him. Is he truly overcome with remorse, or is it all part of a grand, double-blind, sinister master plan?
Told through news-clippings and the ruminations of the villain himself, SINNER is, by turns, thrilling, mysterious, hilarious and terrifying. Chapter by chapter it questions the thin line between truth and lies, good and evil, and how difficult it is to cross over from one side to the other.
Or how easy.
Told through news-clippings and the ruminations of the villain himself, SINNER is, by turns, thrilling, mysterious, hilarious and terrifying. Chapter by chapter it questions the thin line between truth and lies, good and evil, and how difficult it is to cross over from one side to the other.
Or how easy.
239 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 2013
18 people want to read
About the author
Greg Stolze
146 books58 followersGreg Stolze (born 1970) is an American novelist and writer, whose work has mainly focused on properties derived from role-playing games.
Stolze has contributed to numerous role-playing game books for White Wolf Game Studio and Atlas Games, including Demon: the Fallen. Some of Stolze's recent work has been self-published using the "ransom method", whereby the game is only released when enough potential buyers have contributed enough money to reach a threshold set by the author.
Together with John Tynes he created and wrote the role-playing game Unknown Armies, published by Atlas Games. He has also co-written the free game NEMESIS, which uses the One-Roll Engine presented in Godlike and the so called Madness Meter derived from Unknown Armies.
Stolze has contributed to numerous role-playing game books for White Wolf Game Studio and Atlas Games, including Demon: the Fallen. Some of Stolze's recent work has been self-published using the "ransom method", whereby the game is only released when enough potential buyers have contributed enough money to reach a threshold set by the author.
Together with John Tynes he created and wrote the role-playing game Unknown Armies, published by Atlas Games. He has also co-written the free game NEMESIS, which uses the One-Roll Engine presented in Godlike and the so called Madness Meter derived from Unknown Armies.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 5, 2013
I backed Sinner on Kickstarter, as well as Greg Stolze's RPG "Better Angels". Even though I pledged for a physical copy of Sinner, I went ahead and read it on my Kindle (well, and some on the PC -- the newspaper clippings proved to be too hard to read otherwise). I'll still be happy to put the book up on my shelf, and will probably re-read it sometime.
Sinner is the story of a supervillain who turns himself in, and what happens after that. The voice of the very likable protagonist propels everything forward, and it's very easy to get wrapped up in the whole thing. I read it mostly over a lazy, nap-filled July 4th, finishing it off with the sound of fireworks booming from outside.
Lots of fun.
Sinner is the story of a supervillain who turns himself in, and what happens after that. The voice of the very likable protagonist propels everything forward, and it's very easy to get wrapped up in the whole thing. I read it mostly over a lazy, nap-filled July 4th, finishing it off with the sound of fireworks booming from outside.
Lots of fun.
March 31, 2019
Somewhere in between a two and a three out of five for me. The idea here is super problems of a super villain, which is quite an intriguing premise. The book however is a bit too clever for its own sake, often confusing, and plainly weird towards the end. It has its moments of brilliance, but ultimately not my favorite work of the author.
June 1, 2019
Hector Lear, the supervillain known as Sinner, turns himself in to authorities in Illinois. During his trial and subsequent imprisonment, readers learn his background, his powers and the fact that he’s a pretty decent guy (despite having killed several law enforcement officers). His remembrances hinge on the workings of the Night Syndicate, the association of supervillains of which he was a part, and the increasingly erratic and destructive behavior of its leader, Black Marvel. He also reveals his admiration of the superheroes he battles, particularly the Pilgrim and Javelin. And yes, there are robots and aliens thrown in the mix. What makes this book so engaging is that Hector is a smart and thoughtful man, willing to acknowledge his own mistakes, but he also has an acerbic sense of humor. A great fantasy romp for anyone even mildly interested in superheroes and their nemeses.
July 13, 2018
This is a fascinating world with a lot of interesting psychology/sociology questions raised, but most of the action is in flashbacks with big time jumps that made it hard for me to track all the characters. I adore the ending though.
July 8, 2013
So, starting Greg Stolze’s new novel SINNER when I decided to take an hour to relax before bedtime?
Yeah, not a good idea. In fact, pretty serious mistake.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t put this book down. But putting it down involved considerably more willpower than I expected, and I certainly didn’t make any attempt to go on with my own WIP until I reached the end. Luckily it was a fast read!
This book might not be perfect, but it’s way, way better than just pretty good. I'd give it a four and a half if I could give half stars.
One impressive trick Stolze pulls off is, all through this book, he weaves in newspaper clippings, some about superheroes and some about incidents having to do with space travel. His world, it turns out, is very like ours, except that superpowered people started showing up in the fifties and also that our ability to travel through the solar system has been a reality for roughly that long. These two factors eventually tie the book’s plot together into a coherent whole — we find out why superpowers started showing up, for example — but the story is mainly tightly focused on Hector Lear (‘Sinner’), who used to be a supervillain and has now decided to just quit with the villain thing and turn himself in. We find what led to this decision over the course of the story, of course.
This kind of novel, which makes extensive use of asides and flashbacks to propel the present-moment first-person story, is pretty darn hard to pull off. Stolze does an excellent job: every newspaper article, every flashback and every digression is beautifully integrated into the overall story. Nothing about the way Sinner holds back important information feels like Stolze is cheating, largely because we can feel right away how utterly unwilling Sinner is to think about certain events. How did Javalin die? Is she really dead? How about Black Marvel? [And wow, what a villain he is, btw!] What the heck was Sinner’s role in whatever happened? And did he really turn himself in, really for real, or does he have some kind of long-term plan and this is just a tactic? We have many unanswered questions that Sinner could answer, but doesn’t – at least not till it’s appropriate in the story. As I said, this works quite well, which is a tribute to Stolze’s chops as a writer.
Sinner is a great protagonist, with a fluent first-person-smartass voice. But what’s even better is that Stolze seems to give just about every character, no matter how minor, the same careful attention. Supervillains, superheroes, other prisoners, prison guards, Hector’s sister, everyone. This is particularly impressive because lots of these characters get very little time on screen, but we get a solid sense of them just the same. I love the superhero Pilgrim, but then I love the public defender who defends Sinner just as much. There’s even a very (very) faint thread of romance through the story, one that actually adds a nice grace note to the end.
I will say, thought, that to me the ending seems more than a bit rushed and maybe a little contrived. I’ll try to put this clearly without giving anything away: the way Sinner winds up in position to be contacted and picked up by the Egghead et al near the end? For some reason, Stolze didn’t show Sinner making the important decisions that led him into this position. Instead, we only saw glimpses of that part after the fact and from a third-person perspective. Since his decisions during those offstage events seem to contradict years’ worth of earlier decisions we actually did see, I couldn’t really believe in those events.
Even more important, the continuing lack of a first-person view of the very important events right at the end? Not only does that continue to make the action seem rushed, but the shift from a detailed first-person narrative to mere glimpses from a third-person perspective also forces the reader away from the protagonist. Imposing this distance from both the protagonist and the action seems an odd choice for Stolze to make. I would definitely have preferred that Stolze add another fifty pages in order to draw out some of these important scenes in more detail.
I will say, though, that the problem of distance was partly fixed by the brief epilogue, which once more brings the reader closer to the protagonist.
I liked this book enough that eventually, I expect that I’ll probably buy a print edition of this book, because then I’ll be able to loan this book around, which I want to do. I will also be looking for other work by Stolze, because SINNER was more than good enough for me to want to try something else of his. MASK OF THE OTHER sounds like it might be fun, though Cthulhu is not usually my thing.
Yeah, not a good idea. In fact, pretty serious mistake.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t put this book down. But putting it down involved considerably more willpower than I expected, and I certainly didn’t make any attempt to go on with my own WIP until I reached the end. Luckily it was a fast read!
This book might not be perfect, but it’s way, way better than just pretty good. I'd give it a four and a half if I could give half stars.
One impressive trick Stolze pulls off is, all through this book, he weaves in newspaper clippings, some about superheroes and some about incidents having to do with space travel. His world, it turns out, is very like ours, except that superpowered people started showing up in the fifties and also that our ability to travel through the solar system has been a reality for roughly that long. These two factors eventually tie the book’s plot together into a coherent whole — we find out why superpowers started showing up, for example — but the story is mainly tightly focused on Hector Lear (‘Sinner’), who used to be a supervillain and has now decided to just quit with the villain thing and turn himself in. We find what led to this decision over the course of the story, of course.
This kind of novel, which makes extensive use of asides and flashbacks to propel the present-moment first-person story, is pretty darn hard to pull off. Stolze does an excellent job: every newspaper article, every flashback and every digression is beautifully integrated into the overall story. Nothing about the way Sinner holds back important information feels like Stolze is cheating, largely because we can feel right away how utterly unwilling Sinner is to think about certain events. How did Javalin die? Is she really dead? How about Black Marvel? [And wow, what a villain he is, btw!] What the heck was Sinner’s role in whatever happened? And did he really turn himself in, really for real, or does he have some kind of long-term plan and this is just a tactic? We have many unanswered questions that Sinner could answer, but doesn’t – at least not till it’s appropriate in the story. As I said, this works quite well, which is a tribute to Stolze’s chops as a writer.
Sinner is a great protagonist, with a fluent first-person-smartass voice. But what’s even better is that Stolze seems to give just about every character, no matter how minor, the same careful attention. Supervillains, superheroes, other prisoners, prison guards, Hector’s sister, everyone. This is particularly impressive because lots of these characters get very little time on screen, but we get a solid sense of them just the same. I love the superhero Pilgrim, but then I love the public defender who defends Sinner just as much. There’s even a very (very) faint thread of romance through the story, one that actually adds a nice grace note to the end.
I will say, thought, that to me the ending seems more than a bit rushed and maybe a little contrived. I’ll try to put this clearly without giving anything away: the way Sinner winds up in position to be contacted and picked up by the Egghead et al near the end? For some reason, Stolze didn’t show Sinner making the important decisions that led him into this position. Instead, we only saw glimpses of that part after the fact and from a third-person perspective. Since his decisions during those offstage events seem to contradict years’ worth of earlier decisions we actually did see, I couldn’t really believe in those events.
Even more important, the continuing lack of a first-person view of the very important events right at the end? Not only does that continue to make the action seem rushed, but the shift from a detailed first-person narrative to mere glimpses from a third-person perspective also forces the reader away from the protagonist. Imposing this distance from both the protagonist and the action seems an odd choice for Stolze to make. I would definitely have preferred that Stolze add another fifty pages in order to draw out some of these important scenes in more detail.
I will say, though, that the problem of distance was partly fixed by the brief epilogue, which once more brings the reader closer to the protagonist.
I liked this book enough that eventually, I expect that I’ll probably buy a print edition of this book, because then I’ll be able to loan this book around, which I want to do. I will also be looking for other work by Stolze, because SINNER was more than good enough for me to want to try something else of his. MASK OF THE OTHER sounds like it might be fun, though Cthulhu is not usually my thing.
August 1, 2013
This was a really well done book. I'm going to echo what some others have said: The book created a believable world of superheroes and supervillains. The pacing was excellent. The newspaper stories and clippings added depth, and I found I *wanted* to read them. The characters are engaging, the stories behind them have depth, and I felt like I wound up getting to know them rather well.
If there is any fault with the book, it comes in the closing chapters. Through much of the book, we are given the present tense state of Sinner's life, with flashbacks thrown in to help us see how things came to be. The penultimate chapter changes this. Suddenly, we're thrown forward, past some pretty major events (not discussing, so as to avoid spoilers), and given those events as partial flashbacks. Then, in the final chapter/epilogue, we're brought back into the present. I feel like we missed too much in those closing chapters, and I would have preferred to see more of what happened.
I think I'll be looking for more of his work, and definitely recommend it to others.
If there is any fault with the book, it comes in the closing chapters. Through much of the book, we are given the present tense state of Sinner's life, with flashbacks thrown in to help us see how things came to be. The penultimate chapter changes this. Suddenly, we're thrown forward, past some pretty major events (not discussing, so as to avoid spoilers), and given those events as partial flashbacks. Then, in the final chapter/epilogue, we're brought back into the present. I feel like we missed too much in those closing chapters, and I would have preferred to see more of what happened.
I think I'll be looking for more of his work, and definitely recommend it to others.
July 17, 2013
I backed the book on kick starter, as well as the RPG Better Angels. I got much better value out of this story.
Greg puts together a believable modern superhero/villain setting and weaves the tale of a bad guy who tries to atone for his sins and the difficulties involved in such an endeavor. When I say the setting is believable, I mean it, too. Marvel and DC Comics can't create a believable setting with superpowers, but Greg Stolze can and does. Reads this book for that reason, if no other.
Greg puts together a believable modern superhero/villain setting and weaves the tale of a bad guy who tries to atone for his sins and the difficulties involved in such an endeavor. When I say the setting is believable, I mean it, too. Marvel and DC Comics can't create a believable setting with superpowers, but Greg Stolze can and does. Reads this book for that reason, if no other.
June 22, 2022
I got just a taste of superhero action, intriguing glimpses at the world as a whole, and a look askew at how super powers might affect the "real" world. There’s a fascinating mystery at the heart of what’s going on, the truth behind the supers, and why Sinner makes the choices he has. I come back to reread this every few years and haven’t been disappointed yet.
July 25, 2021
I just keep coming back to this book. The protagonist is so compelling, but so are the other characters, though most of them we only meet through the lens of his recollections. It is his perspective that really make the story. I never get tired of re-reading it.
August 3, 2013
good fun, nice idea. pacing on some of the flashbacks is a little odd, but muddling through them is worth it.
September 6, 2016
Not your usual superhero / villain novel, and that's no bad thing. Think more along the lines of Watchmen, and you won't go far wrong. Well worth a read....
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews