He was the Mind Robber. She was the Throwing Star. Can I make it any more obvious?
He was a supervillain with memory-reading-slash-erasing powers who robbed banks to build up his Caribbean retirement fund. She was a vigilante with super-hearing-running-punching-heat-sensing powers who beat up common criminals on a part-time basis. What more can I say?
He had a cat (named Normal). She had drinking problems. And together they will be heroes. Just for one day. Or several
Alright. Notwithstanding the mashup of Avril Lavigne and David Bowie that's been looping in my head since I first read the blurb, and despite your typical premise of "two enemies find common ground and end up working together," the villain and the superhero of We Could Be Heroes do NOT end up in a romantic entanglement—this is a friendship first type of tale—which I thought was delightfully refreshing. And Chen offers a lot more to refresh your dusty, jaded brain crevices. Zoe is an Asian-American superhero-slash-food-delivery-person with amnesia, and Jamie is a pragmatic pansexual British-American bank robber with amnesia. A match made in heaven.
No, truly - they're a great duo. Jamie is a quiet planner, thriving on organization and examining problems from multiple angles, whereas Zoe is an unabashed pantser, throwing caution to the wind and bashing through front doors. Complete opposites and it's a hell of lot of fun seeing them at work. Chen also does his absolute best to add little details that creep under your heart and make you root for the characters. Like how Jamie practices his cliche one-liners and loves books and would spoil his cat to hell and back. Like how Zoe lives for campy slasher flicks.
The fun also comes with dark moments. Zoe is impulsive and deals with addiction and feelings of unfulfillment. Jaime is adamant about avoiding his past. Neither are very good with social interactions; they both use their powers and monikers as a shield against the world, a way to face people with more confident versions of themselves. It's easy to rehearse lines and put on a costume. Harder to go home at the end of the day where there's no one to hide behind except yourself. Chen balances the tonal shifts neatly.
I did find it disappointing, though, that Jamie's backstory was brushed aside and never really touched on again until the end. I guess that's to illustrate the difference between the protagonists - how Zoe digs and digs for answers until she's satisfied, while Jamie would rather just move forward with a new start - but it still feels like a major string left untied. This is a story about setting aside your past in the past and living as the person you are in the present, and a deeper insight into both Jamie and Zoe's previous lives would have put more weight behind the message.
Other than that, the plot is definitely the weakest point. It's your classic fare of "Scientists conduct experiments on humans. Scientists get their asses handed to them by said experiments" - skeletal at best, unanswered questions dotting the narrative like swiss cheese holes at worst. But heavy plotting never seems to be Chen's focal point, and really, with characters like these, it doesn't have to be. For me, charming characters and banter can carry most bland plots, and Jamie and Zoe are the definition of charm. So it was easier to turn the skeptic whispers down low and not get hung up on the fact that some of these organizations - the police especially - acted like people out of a PG-13 cartoon.
Speaking of cartoons, that's what the story felt like - a good Pixar film. Simple, self-aware, a little cheesy (but the kind that keeps you grinning), and all in all endearing. It doesn't seek to completely reinvent the superhero genre or pull you through a deep breakdown of its tropes, but it does doodle in a little party hat and a fuzzy lap cat for the superhero on your comic book cover. Just a bit of fun. Just a bit of heart-tugging humanity. And a reminder that behind every masked hero (or villain-turned-hero) with great power is someone with their own share of flaws and insecurities.
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Review copy provided by the publisher. All opinions are my own