The Ables

The Ables #1

by Jeremy Scott

I did have fantastic hearing, mostly by virtue of being blind. But that couldn't actually mean that he's trying to tell me I have super powers, right? Because that would be ridiculous.

It wasn’t the “sex talk” he expected. Phillip Sallinger’s dad has told him he’s a custodian—a guardian—and his genetically inherited power is telekinesis. He’ll learn to move objects with his mind. Excited to begin superhero high school until he discovers he’s assigned to a “special ed” class for disabled empowered kids, he suddenly feels like an outsider. Bullied, threatened, and betrayed, Phillip struggles, even as he and his friends—calling themselves the Ables—find ways to maximize their powers to overcome their disabilities, and are the first to identify the growing evil threatening humanity. As vital custodians disappear and the custodian leadership is mired in indecision, a mysterious and powerful figure taunts Phillip, and the enemy is poised to strike. But what if the next “one who does all,” the multi-gifted custodian predicted to come, is one of the Ables?

The Ables is a fast-paced, captivating debut novel from Jeremy Scott, a bold new voice in fantasy and sci-fi, and already a widely popular storyteller as co-creator and narrator of CinemaSins, a YouTube channel that has amassed more than 3.8 million subscribers in under two years.

Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Superheroes, Audiobook, Disability

364 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Jeremy Scott is a writer and entertainer from Nashville, TN. He is the co-creator & narrator of CinemaSins, a YouTube channel dedicated to movie-related comedy that has amassed over 3.8 million subscribers in under 2 years' time. A former online marketing consultant, Jeremy spends his time writing, being sarcastic, and greenly hoping to find a good laugh once a day.

Reviews

[Steph]

So Jeremy from CinemaSins is taking his hand at writing, huh? I only have one thing to say here, Scene does not contain a lap dance *ding*. Looking forward to reading it

[Mark Schlatter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up this book (and actually preordered it) because the author is one of the founders of Cinema Sins --- one of my favorite YouTube channels and an excellent provider of genre-focused snark. I also liked the high concept; we follow a group of disabled middle school students who also have superpowers. Unfortunately, their disabilities sometimes hamper their ability to be super, as in the case of our protagonist Phillip, who is a blind telekinetic.

There's a lot of cleverness involved with the superpowers, especially because one of the middle school students (Bentley) is a super genius. Bentley has a number of great insights throughout the book on how our heroes can use their powers more effectively.

Sadly, I found the cleverness was outweighed by the clunkiness of the writing. Scott uses a lot of dialogue to deliver exposition to the reader, and I disliked the emphasis on discussion over action, especially in the first half of the novel. In addition, many of the plot points appeared to be straw men --- the obstacles appeared only to be knocked down, not because of any other logic inherent in the story.

The biggest example I saw of this was early in the novel when we discover that all of our disabled heroes are in a special education class apart from the rest of the school. Please note that there is nothing that would prevent most of these students, if not all, from being placed in regular education classrooms with a few accommodations. In our world, given the current trends in education, that's exactly what would happen, especially since almost all of the students have no learning differences. But in the world of the Ables, we get a 1950's approach to special education, primarily (I'm assuming) to drive conflict.

There are a number of notes like this in the book --- conflicts or problems that appear with little rhyme or reason. Near the end of the novel, a betrayal in the past becomes very important. Unfortunately for the reader, we never get a clear idea of why the betrayal occurred, just that we need to know about it.

There's some good stuff here, especially in the interactions between the kids. I just wish the plotting was strong enough to support the characters.

[Rosie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Be warned, this is a long review.

As an avid viewer of Cinema Sins, my excitement when I heard that Jeremy Scott had written the book was impalpable, especially when I heard what the book was about.

‘The Ables’ is set in a world where superheroes (Custodians) live in secret while defending the world from evil. Each hero has their own abilities and must learn to use these by attending a special school. The main character is a twelve-year old boy called Philip Sallinger, with the gift of telekinesis and who is blind. He finds himself in the special education class at school where he and his classmates must learn to overcome their disabilities and work together to save the town.
I really wanted to enjoy this book. The premise sounded fascinating and it was refreshing to see disables characters taking the foreground, especially since they have superpowers. The story itself was enjoyable too and pleasant to read. However, there were a number of problems I had with it.

Firstly, as a book about disabled children overcoming any disadvantages they might have to prove that they are as capable as abled people, this book conveniently forgets any problems that the disabilities might have, even giving the blind character a way to see. This in itself gave a number of problems. For instance, as someone who had been blind his entire life, the first time Philip sees the world he is able to read a nameplate. It would be impossible for him to be able to read so quickly. These inconsistencies continued throughout the book, with a character who lost his arm regaining it on occasion and on occasion some disabilities seemed forgotten. I also have issues with how depression was treated – it got a page at most of the character saying how he knew he was depressed because he was acting so selfishly before being was told to snap out of it, after which the depression was supposedly ‘cured’. That is not how depression works at all and it came across as quite offensive.

Secondly, for all this book proclaimed to be about representation and diversity, there was a single character of ethnic diversity (of which a big deal was made of). There were also three female characters who got more than a passing mention. One was the mother – a fabulous cook whose one time in action resulted in her becoming unconscious a minute after arrive. One was a fellow disabled student who accompanied the group once on Halloween and left early because she was tired, never to seen or heard of again. The last was a teacher who was prominent in helping the boys at the beginning, but was forgotten about half way though. This was disappointing. I understand that twelve year old boys have a thing about being friends with girls (I have brothers) but the treatment of women in this was appalling. They did not even feature in the final climactic battle – all the characters mentioned were men.

The writing was not as good as I had hoped. It is incredibly difficult to write from a blind perspective, but the chunks of exposition revealed in the dialogue was clumsy and distracting from the story. A pivotal aspect of the story was a betrayal made in the past for which no explanation was given and which made very little sense. It was also incredibly predictable – I guessed all the main twists and the plot points from the first 50 pages. I also felt the world was not quite as built up as it could have been and the fact that certain characters such as one with asthma and one in a wheelchair ended up in a special education class made no sense – they had no learning difficulties and were perfectly capable of joining in with the rest of the school.

I really hate being negative but this novel did have a lot of issues with it and many parts of it did not make sense. I think it may have worked better as a film, but as a book it was not great; especially since I’m not sure it was proofread before it was published (there was at least one big formatting error and a number of inconsistencies). The book has been left open for a sequel, so I will give the second book a try since there is a lot of potential, but a lot of issues to overcome.

[Sleepless Dreamer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has been on my currently reading shelf for 4 years so I'm very glad to have finally finished it.

So The Ables is about Phillip, a blind kid who learns that he and everyone in his city have superpowers. They are custodians, in charge of protecting the world and fighting villains. Philip befriends a gang of superhero kids with disabilities and participates in a villain fighting competition while also trying to deal with a mysterious figure. 

As an idea, this is awesome. I love the idea of combining disabilities with superpowers- it makes me think about Greta Thunberg describing her Asperger's as a superpower that allows her to focus. However, the execution of this book is not great, unfortunately.

About halfway through this book, Philip finds a way to see. I think this is a massive disappointment. Writing a blind superhero is challenging. As I see it, if you decide the best way to face this challenge is to find a way for the blind character to see, it's a cop out. You asked the question, "what would happen if there was a blind superhero?" and then answered it with, "so they weren't blind because they found a way to see!". 

A few years ago, I worked as a director and one of my actors was blind. Sure, there were things that were harder for her but she also had the best memory I've ever seen. Her hearing was remarkable. She could imitate other people's intonation easily. Heck, she once gave me a hug and then said, "did you know this other person from the cast uses the same shampoo as you?". In some ways, her blindness gave her abilities that seeing people don't have- might I even say superpowers? 

So this book could have found creative solutions. Scott decides that telekinesis requires being able to see/ visualize the thing you're moving. This is an odd decision that seems to exist solely in order to create conflict. Surely telekinesis rests upon knowing where the things are, instead of being able to see them? 

I might be overly analyzing this but you don't need to see something to know that it's there. As a blind person, Philip is constantly using things without seeing them. He knows where he places them so why can't he easily move them with his mind, without seeing them? Isn't it the same? 

We've got to ask what message we're sending. I'm thinking, if I knew a kid who was blind, using a wheelchair or any other disability described here, I'd want them to know that their lives aren't less rich than other people's. I'd want them to know that being blind does present challenges but there are solutions. I'd want to send an empowering yet realistic message. This book just fails on both counts and for no real reason. For most people, disabilities don't suddenly disappear through an easy way out. The author could have found an elegant way to show how a blind kid can be a superhero, without eliminating it. 

In general, the rest of his gang of friends have disabilities that hardly play a part. It seems like Scott was trying to create underdogs and felt this would be the best route, rather than engage genuinely with the topic. It doesn't go beyond skin deep.

These problems shows up in the rest of the plot as well. Philip and his gang of friends ask to participate in the competition. Initially, they are told they can't because they're disabled. They fight for their right to participate and then promptly spend the next 300 pages proving to everyone that they shouldn't have been allowed to participate. Not because of their disabilities but because Philip constantly leads them into making bad decisions. I suppose that's an accurate description of teenaged superheros but Philip's sheer stupidity drove me insane.

If all of this wasn't enough, this book is slow and way longer than it should be. It's over 550 ebook pages and could have easily been 300. There are plot points that seem meaningless, things happen and get solved without any actual importance. The big reveals were not very exciting. There was so much dialogue that didn't serve any purpose. Some good editing would have done wonders as right now, it just isn't a very compelling book. 

To conclude, it's a shame that this idea didn't work out as well as it should have. I think it's important for future readers to know that this book is middle grade, rather than ya. I feel like I'm just grumpy because it took me way too long to finish this. I'd feel bad about this critique but I'm pretty sure Jeremy Scott has said worse things about other people's work in CinemaSins.

What I'm Taking With Me
- This book literally doesn't have any women in it, up to the point that it's a little weird. 
- I find it hard to believe that Philip could get used to seeing so quickly. Like, there's research about this type of thing, it's not that easy. While writing this review, I learned that visually impaired people have been able to improve their sight through cameras and bionic eye implants. That's wild.  
- There's a character who's supposed to be super smart but I just found them annoying. Like sheesh, can't you be super intelligent and not insufferable?

--------------------
Oh my, this day is practically over and I haven't done anything and my Logics homework is not making any sense and Statistics might end up making me cry, ahhhhh.

Also, all of my favorite courses are now over, leaving only the evil ones. How could Government in Israel and Identity Politics in Europe do this to me?

Review to come!

[Jule · Rating 1 out of 5]

You know cinemasins, that very funny and very sucessfull youtube channel about movies? Yeah, its voice and co-creator just published a book. Sadly, it is everything but funny. I (once again) wish goodreads had half-stars, because this deserves nothing more than 1,5 of them.

“The Ables” sounded like such an amazing story: a group of disabled middle schoolers discover they live in a world where everyone has superpowers. Sadly for them, their super powers and their disabilities clash - like in our protagonist Phillip’s case: he is blind, but also a telekinetic. So far so good. Only that instead of showing how Phillip learns to deal with his blindness (a blind superhero is not entirely unheard of, see Daredevil), Jeremy Scott writes a solution that makes Phillip see again with the help of someone else. When he does not entirely forget that his hero is blind and instead writes him seeing stuff. I mean - come on!

In general, there seem to be a lot of forgetting from the author’s side. You can not have a guy loose an arm and have him use “both hands” fifty pages later. Did your editor fall asleep during that bit (like he did for a lot of other parts)?

So not only was this only half as inspiring for disabled kids as I thought it would be, it was also badly written. There were whole paragraphs that described the exact same thing, there were plain out illogical scenarios (like how the hero can correctly guess the precise degree of temperature) and world-building mistakes. I could not identify with the characters, which seemed to behave oddly mature for 12-year olds and in the end, the plot was very formulaic.

The writing sounded a lot like a movie, with sudden cuts and lots of action and description instead of internal things. And that would be my ultimate feedback, too: stick to movies, dude. It is clearly what you know how to do best.

[Debbie is on Storygraph · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have not heard of the author prior to requesting this book, so did not realize he had a large online following for his youtube channel. The book premise sounded interesting. I love superhero stories and I love when stories make a point of adding diversity to the cast.

Pros:
The plot moved along quickly, and all the characters were likeable. It was a coming-of-age story for superheroes. I liked that in the end, the POV character did not save the day, and instead served as solely the narrator for the end of the book.

Cons:
This book needed a round of editing with an eye solely for continuity. There were several points during the narrative where it was apparent the author forgot that his characters were disabled in some fashion. Many many times, Philip would turn his head to look at somebody or watch something (even before Henry let him borrow his sight). One of the pivotal scenes required a one-armed character to have two hands. Little things that threw me completely out of the story.

This book failed the Bechdel test and it really shouldn't have. There were girls in the Ables' class who could have played a role in the plot. The teacher could have played a larger role. One of the Ables could have been a girl instead of a boy. Etc. For all that this book was about representation, it sucked a lot at female representation. (Also, ethnic diversity. Henry was the only non-white character, and the fact that Philip made a big deal about that implied that all the other characters defaulted to white.)

Also, the plotting could have used a little work. I understand this was a middle-grade or young adult book, but all the plot twists were readily apparent for a reader who was paying attention. I figured out fairly early on who Finch was, who Elben was, and even who the traitor was in the Ables.

There was a lot of potential here. It just never came together for me.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via Netgalley

[Marjolein (UrlPhantomhive) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read all reviews on http://urlphantomhive.booklikes.com

I wanted to like this book so bad! I'm a big fan of the YouTube Channel CinemaSins and when I heard the voice behind it had written a book, I thought that was right into my alley. When I got an eARC of the book, I was very happy!

Jokingly I told my friends I would certainly go and sin the book just as the movies, but I didn't know that would be such a massive job. The premise of disabled super heroes working together to save the world and overcome their disabilities was nice enough. Unfortunately, it was filled with almost all the clichés in the book and that was something I didn't expected (as in the CinemaSins they always make fun of clichés in movies). Besides in the beginning I found it far too easy to put the book down and read something else instead. I some times need to do that if I have another review book that needs to be read first, but it was simply too easy this time. It took about the halfway mark before I was really invested in the story. After that point it was a nice and quick read. And please, let me explain: I did enjoy reading it, it just wasn't as original as I hoped it would be.

Some minor spoilers may follow as I try to explain this.

The MC, Philip, is blind, which is inconvenient to say the least with his flowering superpower of telekinesis. After moving to a city that is completely filled with superheroes (and some of their minions), even though his little brother isn't to know about all this for some time (which I think is hard in a city filled with superheroes) and which seemed like a terrible strategic choice because if I were a super villain, I'd know just which city to nuke!

Philip attends the special high school for super heroes, but is put in a weird hodgepodge class of disabled children. I was wondering why all these children were put in that class in the first place. Many of them seemed to be ABLE to attend regular classes I'd say. There's for example a deaf girl (but can't she lip read? and if not, what is the use of placing her together with blind kids for sign language) and a boy with I think some kind of spasms in his leg. Why would you need to go to a special class for that? I spent my whole secondary school with a boy in my class who also suffered from leg spasms and we just helped him from room to room and there wasn't a single problem.

The deaf girl's superpower is superhearing, which is utterly useless to her and proves that life's a bitch. It's said that the whole superpower thing has something to do with genetics, since it's mostly familial, but then again it's said that only 10% of the children inherit the same power as their parents. How does THAT work? I wonder.

On this High School, and brace yourself: clichés are coming, an old tournament, that's been abandoned for years because of safety issues, has been brought back but our band of disabled super heroes is banned from participating. (I'm quite sure you also thought for a moment I was talking about The Goblet of Fire). For some reason, they are then allowed to participate, they find some evidence that a certain villain is on the rise but when they're back at school no one believes them? Sounds familiar, huh?

The rest I'll leave to yourself to figure out, but believe me: it doesn't end their. Also featured:

dead parents cliché, prophecy of a chosen one cliché, 'Luke, I'm your father'-cliché


From the blurb I'd gotten the idea that The Ables was also going to be about overcoming disabilities, and I thought that would be a wonderful message to spread. But 'overcoming' in this context mostly meant using other powers to fill in the gap. It's not about using telekinesis as a blind person, it's about borrowing someone else's vision to do it more easily. That felt a bit like cheating...

All in all, while enjoyable it was also cliché-ridden and that made me cringe more than once. Would I read the sequel? I probably would, but I wouldn't set my expectations quite as high as I did for this one.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

[Heather Clawson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked this book, I really did, and I don't want to sound like some sort of femma-nazi, BUT...

...Where in the hell are the female characters?

No joke, this book is 100%, straight up Sausage Fest. And the reason I have such a problem with that, is because there is absolutely no reason why it needs to be. It's not like this is a story about an all-boys swim team, or a Liberace memoir. There are only two women of any note in the book, and they're both mentioned a total of maybe two times before they basically disappear (one for a legitimate reason, the other...just *poof*. Gone.)

None of the Ables are girls (even though there are two girls mentioned who are in the Special Class that all of the Ables belong to.) None of the villians are women. None of the supporting characters are women. None of the ancillary characters are women. Oh. Wait. I forgot. There is one lady who plays a--gasp--hostage during one of the sims. And that's the other thing. The women who ARE mentioned are in stereotypical female roles, i.e. Mother, Teacher, Damsel in distress. The only thing it's missing is a beauty queen and a prostitute to round out the set.

Now, to be clear, I don't believe that Mr. Scott was in any way trying to belittle or marginalize women with this story (although it IS kind of strange / sad that no one seemed to notice this to call him out on it before it went into print.) I truly just think that he overlooked the fact that all of his characters came out as dudes. This IS his first book after all, so cut the guy a break. I will, however, use the opportunity to encourage him to maybe cut back on the penis power a bit in his second book. Seriously. Women make excellent bad guys, fantastic surprise characters, and nothing, but nothing, can screw up a young man's judgement like a chick. It's a superpower in and of itself, especially when the girl in question has no idea that she's wielding it.

[Jack Fairey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up 'The Ables', as many people have, because I know Jeremy Scott through his Youtube channel. As a big fan of his, I was excited to see how he would turn his hand to writing; add an interesting premise that seemed straight down my street, and I was in.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed. And though Scott's Youtube fame will surely have boosted the sale of this book, I think it has also proved the book's downfall.

Now, that's not me suggesting that Youtubers can't write good books. But not long in to 'The Ables' it's clear that this is a book that needed serious revision before it got to the public, and a long hard looking over by an editor. Seemingly, it got neither, and my theory behind that is that Jeremy's fame and therefore easy to tap into market meant the book was published in a sub par state.

The most annoying thing is that there's potential here. The concept is interesting, and the representation for disabled kids who want to be superheroes makes me happy the book exists. But a lot of that potential is wasted.

The plot is pretty derivative: if you've read Percy Jackson or Harry Potter you've pretty much read this too (prophecy, kid finds out they've got powers, goes to training camp, ect). The characters are relatively interesting, if slightly one dimensional. The world building is the best part of the book, and a lot of the little details are lovely.

But the biggest issue with the book is that it's lazy. The blind POV character describes how things look like (and not even when he's teaming up with his friend to allow him to see). This could easily have been rectified by even the most light run of editing.

There are barely any female characters: one who's a mother, one who's an annoying stereotype with precisely two pages of screen time, and another - a teacher -who shows up in the beginning, appears interesting, before being forgotten. Jeremy claimed that he was writing realistically, since 12 year old boys don't hang out with girls, but for me it's just laziness. As much as the book gains points for it's representation of disabled kids, it loses them for a distinct lack of females - and also having only one POC in the whole book.

Overall, I didn't hate 'The Ables'. But I wouldn't recommend it. In my opinion, in this state it's not good enough to be published, and unfortunately has been allowed into the world in a sub par state because of Jeremy Scott's Youtube audience. There is potential, but a lot of that is wasted, and unless Scott improves, he should stick to the more visual medium.

[Jessica Strider · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Ables by Jeremy Scott

Pros: highly unique pov, great cast of characters, dry sense of humour,

Cons: several small errors ruined immersion, some aspects of the story were hard to believe

For Parents: some swearing, some violence

The day before starting grade 7 at his new school in Freepoint city, Philip Sallinger’s dad takes him aside for ‘the talk’. But it’s not the sex talk Philip expected. He, his parents, and most of the people in their remote city, are superheroes, or as they call themselves, custodians. But Phillip’s blindness creates an obstacle with regards to using his power, and he finds himself in the special education class with others who have physical and mental differences.

Along with his new friends, Phillip must overcome the prejudices of those around them, and help protect the city from a dangerous enemy.

The novel is told from Phillip’s point of view and while much of the book includes visual clues to what’s happening, there are a lot of auditory and other sensory descriptions as well. The book takes Phillip through a variety of challenging experiences and it’s great watching him grow up, even if he does make a lot of mistakes.

The group of kids on the whole was excellently written.  They’ve each got a disability (two are blind, one's in a wheelchair, one has down syndrome, one has extreme asthma and one has ataxic cerebral palsy), but they’ve obviously learned to adapt and end up doing a large number of remarkable things throughout the book.  The author never forgets that certain things are more challenging for them, but also shows that those challenges are surmountable by determined individuals.

I really appreciated the book’s dry sense of humour, especially Phillip and James’s so called ‘blind humour’.

There were a number of problems with the novel, some of which are probably not things regular readers will notice or care about.

For example, we’re told early on in a mini history lesson that a pre-Biblical group of superheroes, who faced off with a supervillain, called themselves “the Ables”. This made no sense to me. We’re given the etymology for the use of the term ‘custodians’, so it struck me as wrong that a late middle English word would be used to describe an ancient group (especially by themselves). Yes, you could argue that it’s the modern translation of the word they would have used, but then why not use that word, or at least tell us that word? English didn’t exist as a language when this group was alive, and it would have made the superhero world’s history sound more authentic if an older word had been introduced with it, a la: “They called themselves ‘ipa’, which is Aramaic for ‘having the means to accomplish a task’. We call them the Ables.”

Occasional imprecise use of language kicked me out of the narrative. By which I mean that something was implied in the text that’s later explicitly refuted. There’s a scene where something embarrassing happens and Phillip wakes up wondering what rumours would be circulating. The impression I got from the scene - from the language used - was that this was the next morning after the event happened, but a few pages later I learned that several weeks had passed. I was left wondering why he’d be worrying about rumours that he must have heard by now and were likely dying down by this point. Each time this happened I found myself rereading the earlier section to figure out if I’d read it properly and/or had missed something. On one occasion I realized that Phillip had assumed something that turned out to not be true, but on others the text really did contain a contradiction.

I also spotted a few minor continuity errors, but these didn’t impact the story at all.

There were some aspects of the story that I didn’t really believe. There’s only been one death in a SuperSim over numerous years - despite the variety of powers on display and lack of training many of the kids apparently had - and that one death was caused by an inability to see? the SuperSim seems like the kind of activity that would, at the least, injure several people each year, regardless of how careful everyone tried to be. I was surprised that grade 7 students were allowed to participate at all, considering they were just gaining their powers and hadn’t had much training yet. The kids in the book learn so much more about their powers outside of school than inside of it that I wondered what official superhero training they were receiving, beyond history lessons, that would even prepare them for the superhero life.

I thought that the fallout from Donnie’s accident was overblown, considering his down syndrome had nothing to do with what happened, though this was pointed out by Phillip in the text.

Certain aspects of the plot were a little predictable, but on the whole the book went in directions I didn’t expect, with the SuperSim and other actions.

Despite these issues, the writing for the most part was smooth and entertaining. There’s a lot of variety in the action and the book is never boring. There are a few swear words used - in a realistic context - at the end of the book and minor violence a certain points in the book.

While I enjoyed the book, particularly the unique point of view and characters, the number of times I was jolted from the story due to small errors decreased my immersion. There’s a lot to like here - especially protagonists not generally seen in fiction at all, let alone a superhero story, and I do recommend it. Just try not to read it, as I had to, with a critical bent.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was great!! Superheroes with disabilities, who are dimensional characters and have an awesome friendship. This book made me laugh and cry, and want to go to superhero school. I would have liked some more girl characters though.

[CrowCaller · Rating 1 out of 5]

[The full reviewis here, it's too long for this website. The video version can be watched here]


There is a grim truth I must confess, before we begin: I wouldn’t be in the reviewing game without the likes Cinema Sins— Or far darker still, the Nostalgia Critic. Both are comedy channels on Youtube I watched endlessly as a teen, not because I found them funny but because they were full of spoilers for things I’d never watch. When I got into book reviews, I wanted to provide something similar.

Cinema Sins isn’t well regarded these days. It offers arbitrary critique based on a rubric of ‘sin’ or ‘not sin’, often missing the point of films entirely. However, Cinema Sins is supposed to be comedy: It’s a bit. As much as I don’t care for them, I’ve seen people swing too hard against them for poor media analysis skills, when providing a highbrow review was never the point. It was a joke that got successful and the creators are now locked in forever.

This is to say when I picked The Ables by Cinema Sins co-creator Jeremy-Scott up for this review, I was one of few people in my Discord going ‘eh, I never had anything against Cinema Sins, the book might be okay’. With its unexpected well-intentioned topic, lower age range, and self-published nature, The Ables seemed like it was a passion project. Maybe behind Cinema Sins was someone with genuine ideas and passion who was just stuck married to an unfunny bit.

I abandoned this goodwill before the end of chapter one.

The Ables is a superhero story about disabled kids proving themselves as heroes when everyone else doubts them. The book is YA, but it aims for the younger side, with most of the cast being 12/13. While the story sounds so basic it belongs in an after school special, that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be well executed. Disabled kids deserve more stories about characters like them.

Disabled kids do not deserve, however, The Ables.

It becomes rapidly clear early on that Jeremy Scott did not do proper research on any of the disabilities he portrayed in this book. I do not believe he spoke to a blind person before he made his lead blind, and I think as much as he might have googled ‘Ataxic Cerebral Palsy’, he definitely didn’t bother learning anything about Down syndrome.

The result is that this book, about misfit kids dismissed for being ‘too disabled’ teaming up to save the day, appears to despise the disabled and reinforce the idea that the disabled are inherently less than their peers unless they overcome the inherent suffering of being disabled. It’s easy to imagine the correct way to write a story like this: the kids would face obstacles because of their disabilities, but also show off unique strengths and knowledge. Instead, these children hate being disabled, fail at every step, and the main character only makes progress into competence by being cured of his blindness.

Disability is a complex topic because it is a broad one. I’m an advocate of a half-death of the author: Fiction should function without the need for a biography, because this is how the majority of people are likely to experience the work. However, the context gained from knowing the author is often valuable, and in cases like discussing disability, adds needed insight.

One of the first things I did before reading The Ables was, for once, look into Jeremy Scott and his relationship to disability. In an article for the Columbia Chronicle, Jeremy mentions the lack of representation of disabled characters, his hopes for the series, and his own disabilities:

Scott, who is 50% deaf in both of his ears and has anxiety and depression, said there is a lot of himself reflected in his characters and story.
Columbia Chronicle article “’The Ables’ series showcases ability in disability”, Nov 1, 2019

Disabled people, like any marginalized group, often have stories written about them by people who lack knowledge on the actual lived experiences of being disabled. Even if Jeremy doesn’t share any disabilities with the cast of his novel, he still has had lived experience of being disabled. I will not deny him that. However, his lack of experience with the disabilities he depicts is obvious.

In an interview with TAM magazine, he was asked if writing a blind first person perspective was a challenge:

“The challenge of that was sort of why I did it. […] I thought that while I am sure I’m not only author to ever write in the first person perspective of a blind person, the idea is definitely unique. I thought it would be interesting to try the to tell the story using either visuals from other people or Phillip’s other senses. It was tough. There were definitely times where I couldn’t do what I wanted to in terms of my original plan, but I think the book is better for it. ”
TAMagazine, “Interview: Jeremy Scott, author of ‘The Ables’ and co-writer for Cinema Sins”, May 14, 2015

What stands out in what I’ve read is that there is no mention of research or consultation. Jeremy describes writing from a first person blind perspective as hard, but I can find no evidence he ever asked a blind person for help or watched a video on the subject. Jeremy’s own experiences with hearing loss and mental health conditions may offer insight to the othering experience of disability, but it cannot provide accuracy and authenticity for being blind. Disabled people need more representation, but it isn’t representation if it’s an outsider closing their eyes and imagining very hard. I don’t know for certain Jeremy didn’t consult anyone while writing this book, but I will confidently say if so, he didn’t take anything he learned to heart.

It is also worth mentioning before we get to the actual plot that I myself am disabled. Most notable is a chronic condition which only developed a few years ago. I understand the hesitation to insert too much of yourself into a book, but it makes me think how much better The Ables might have been if Jeremy had used his progressive hearing loss as the main character’s disability instead of blindness. The feeling of changing for the worse, trying to accept yourself as disabled while also acknowledging it sucks, the progressive othering from the able-bodied existence… it’s a very interesting perspective that it sounds like Jeremy might know something about and could have used in his novel! Unlike blindness.

[SCROLL TO TOP TO GET LINK TO REST OF REVIEW. IT IS LIKE 15K!]

[Michelle Elliott · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was a disappointment. I am not super familiar with CinemaSins, so I don't care about who the author is, but I was excited about the premise. Only a couple chapters in, I started wondering if this was a self-published book. Yup! The worst part is that if only Jeremy Scott had taken the time to get an agent and a proper editor with a real publishing house, this could have been an excellent book. The story itself is interesting, but he does an extremely mediocre job telling it, and there are a lot of flaws that could have been caught and fixed if he'd even had a friend who was good at proofreading. He clearly improved as a writer from the beginning of the book to the end, but didn't go back and do any serious editing.

I almost never review books, but I need to get a few things off my chest after reading this.

1. I have no idea who the target audience is. I know this guy has a Youtube channel and knew he could sell this book to rabid fans, but those fans are mostly adults. This book talks to its readers like they're children. There is no room to figure things out yourself because the book spends SO MUCH TIME telling you what every bit of dialogue meant. The cover says YA, the formatting says YA/Adult, but the writing says I should be about 10 years old.

2. Why is there a random Adult Phillip voice giving his two cents every once in a while? No one wants it. It's obnoxious and spoils how things are going to turn out right before they happen.

3. What 12 year old is going to ask his friends, "Whom should we get on our team?"

4. Chad regrows his arm twice. Once while tripping a bad guy in New York by getting "on his hands and knees" and again, importantly, by placing a hand on both Henry and Phillip to make them invisible at the end.

5. Penelope walks around with them on Halloween. Plenty of people have already complained about the female representation, so I won't harp on that, but this girl is supposed to be intolerant of sunlight. I guess it was dark outside? It's never mentioned that she could come out because it's safe in the dark. She just showed up, complained to show how annoying those pesky girls are, attracted Bentley in a vaguely referenced way so that he wouldn't be in the next scene (but WHY?), and then walked out of the book forever.

6. Late in the book, Mrs. Crouch mentions that Darla is deaf and blind. Who is Darla? In his class is a Delilah Darlington who is deaf. Does she go by the nickname Darla because of her last name, or did the author forget her name and not bother to check? Because even I checked.

7. Formatting errors. Random bolding of a partial sentence and Part 4 looking like it's the last sentence of a chapter. Come on, guys!

8. Phillip abuses Henry for the ability to see, and Henry is totally cool with it because Phillip is the only one who matters. Henry is 12. He does not have the willpower to stare at a computer screen while danger is happening all around him in the final scenes, just so Phillip can see and hopefully save the day.

9. Bentley climbs on a desk, lifts a flowerpot over his head, and jumps off a desk? Okay, sure. They only need to have disabilities when it's not inconvenient for the author. Also, they pushed a desk up against the door, which opened inward (as Scott spent way too much time telling us), so how did the "bad guys" as Phillip constantly calls them, open the door and get hit with flowerpots being held by the kids standing on that desk behind the door? What is happening here?
In fact, I think the over-explanation of the desk is a good example of the writing style. Let's include it.

"Bentley, James, Freddie, and Patrick his in a classroom just down the hall from the prisoners and Finch's guards. The gang had moved the teacher's desk to a new position behind the door. The classroom door opened inward, and the desk now stood behind the door."

We get it. It's in a perfect location for me to *headdesk*

10 Freddie. I constantly forgot that Freddie existed. He didn't add anything to the story, and only spoke up every once in a while. He should have been replaced with one of the girls from class to better round out the characters.

11. Are all his friends 12? Is their entire special ed class 12? Are there multiple grades of it? Are there enough kids with special needs (because this book didn't use person-first language, but I will) in this small town of superheroes to populate six grades of special ed classes, or do our characters just happen to be the same age in a class that covers several grades or all 7-12th graders? This doesn't even count the question of why a lot of them aren't in normal classes anyway. They can't use their powers in school, so it's not like they should function any differently from a school of non-superpowered kids.

Okay, I've run out of steam.

Jeremy, get an editor and do this again, please. I would love to read an edited, re-released version of this in the future.

[Selina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I so so so wanted to like this novel! The idea is fun and unique. The characters, at first, seemed fully fleshed out and engaging. However, this is a great example of good ideas with poor execution and sloppy writing.

From just a reader perspective: Phrases and ideas are constantly repeated, and the same few character ticks are constantly used for the same characters, making them all seem very two dimensional. While this does leave room for sequels, I felt like there was very little emotion anywhere in the book. Why is Henry always so angry? How does Bentley feel about his family life? How does Phil actually feel about everything beyond violent rage?

From a writing POV, I feel like this book has a lot of issues. One major issue is the utter and complete lack of almost ANY female characters apart from the mother and the old teacher. While I recognize that this book is middle grade, it is unrealistic to think that only men exist in this super hero town. Women are 51% of the population... so while I don't expect women to be 50% of the characters, having more female presence would be more realistic.

Also, when writing about characters with disabilities, it is great that the author did not define the characters solely by them. However, he also does not portray disabilities in a realistic way that explores some of the limitations. By this, I mean Phil being able to see. There were multiple times where Phil would glance around to see what was happening, which is impossible because he is blind! Even if he is wearing the camera that Bentley put together, this is not always clear. If he is wearing the camera that Henry looks at, it should be more obvious. Also, another BIG issue I had was Phil's ability to read. Braille is NOTHING like printed letters. When Phil can read the word "Archives," it totally pulled me out of the book because it was too unrealistic.

The writing was also clunky. I can appreciate the occasional pull away where you end the chapter with "I have a plan!" and then cut to a scene later without spoiling the plan, but there were many places where there was no coherent flow from chapter to chapter.

While I didn't love this book for all of the reasons above, I do think this would be a good book for middle grade readers who might be able to relate to some of the characters.

[Ronie Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

That was an interesting young adult read. Glad I gave it a read.

[Ric Chapin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have to be honest.

I sorta-kinda, really-really don’t like this book.

I’m hopeful Jeremy Scott finds it in his heart to forgive an anonymous asshole on the internet for picking it apart, but -

The Ables:

This book feels as though someone took 3 separate stories like X-Men, Harry-Potter, and Hunger Games, blended them together and then tried to stich a plot from the choicest bits of each.

I can picture Jeremy at a table thinking to himself: “Okay, how can I incorporate what I talk about in CinemaSins into my story?”

For the most part -- he does fine. He’s written an ACTUAL book which has been my personal dream and thus far he leads the scoreboard. However, I don’t think Jeremy actually loved or even necessarily liked his characters, which is this book’s biggest flaw. To understand this, let’s start at the premise and work up.

A 12 year old blind boy is told he has powers that superheroes are real and he must learn to overcome his disability to be a real hero – essentially: unexpected hero has to learn to be a king, the gimmick being our king is disabled.

Thematically, there’s a lot to be wrung from this premise: personal desire/drive vs. societal preconceived notions, the overall stigma towards disabled persons, being an outcast, blah, blah, blah.

To Jeremy’s credit he picks up on these themes and incorporates them into his story –BUT– despite this, there’s disconnect between characters and plot. Let me give you an example.

SPOILERS.

At a crucial juncture Phillip and his team of other disabled heroes in training stumble onto a cult-leader named Finch who appears intent on fulfilling a prophecy that’ll bring about the return of a meta-human with every super-power imaginable i.e. God. During the first Super-Simulation (Sim), they encounter Finch in a library where he vanishes them. They then encounter Finch again during Halloween and Finch leaves Phillip’s mother in a comma. Philip and his Ables go back to the library to investigate, SURPRISE, Finch again, who coerces Phillip and his team through the power of yelling like a prick to take a book. Philip then encounters Finch at the hospital after his teammate Donnie gets into a horrible accident with his super-speed during the 2nd Super-Sim and herein Finch decides to kill Philip’s mother who he’d put into a comma b/c evidently Philip is this ‘God-character’ he wants on his side and Philip didn’t want to go with him so Finch killed his mother in retaliation by severing her life-force or whatever.

And this is what I mean by Jeremy Scott doesn’t seem to like the characters he’s writing about. When combing through this plot, sure our main protagonist is disabled but does that warrant him constantly having to be shitted upon? Continuously? I gave up reading it after pg. 260 whatever.

The main protagonist Philip doesn’t seem worthy of his own adventure (or lack thereof). More often than naught it’s his friends who’re constantly bailing him out. One in particular – BENTLEY – who often robs Philip of vital character development b/c he’s essentially Philip’s brain’s stand-in to elaborate on the things the reader can figure out for themselves just by, y’know, reading the book. Such as Philip’s reliance upon a telepath named Henry to project images into his brain to create ‘vision’. Why is Bentley the one who has that eureka moment to put two-n-two together rather than Philip? Isn’t this ‘Philip’s’ story? I don’t know half the time b/c Philip feels more like a prop than a character.

Speaking of props, if you have a character providing emotional investment for readers, don’t kill them without proper send-off. I would’ve preferred if there was a touching moment where Philip’s mother gave her life to save her child at some pivotal moment. I mentioned Finch killed Philip’s mother after he’d put her into a comma, but once she’s served her purpose within the story – dead.

This of course is to artificially create tension between Philip and Finch, but I don’t even know what Finch’s plan is:
Step 1.) Get this kid on my side.
Step 2.) Threaten to kill his mother if he doesn’t join my side.
Step 3.) Kill his mother?
Step 4.) Profit!!!

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS PLAN?!?!

There’s this book called “Thirsty”, which follows a young boy who suddenly and inexplicably comes down with Vampirism and finds himself player in a plot to destroy a Vampire God. In that book, Chad the Enlightened One’s plan is straight-forward: use kid to place device in the Vampire God’s home-world so that it’ll destroy itself. This happens fairly early and the protagonist is left to freak right the fuck out on whether he was being played or even if his vampirism can be cured  this is how you make people care about you’re story: “Did I just give Satan free reign to come into this world and fuck up everything I hold dear?” (Much like I assume many thought as they cast their ballots for the 2016 election) In the end the Vampire-God winds up killing himself and Chad reveals that was the God’s intent all along. The brilliant thing about this is it completely mirrors the themes of Thirsty which in turn are similar to those of the Ables, Vampirism of course as a stand in for the typical problems young people transitioning into adult hood fair with and vice versa with Philip’s superpowers, primarily how over-powered one can be when they're young, isolated and within a realm that seemingly doesn't care about them.

I could go on and on and on about things I don’t like about the Ables. But I’m just going to summarize the main points that cause unto me great umbrage so I can stop writing this thing as it’s already longer than I intended.

The characters are wooden and uninteresting with no discernible traits and tradeable dialogue – I couldn’t describe many of these characters or even picture them in my head. Henry’s defining character trait is evidently he’s black. Okay.

Character motivations and priorities are all over the map.

The premise falls on its face a bit. I would’ve just preferred a story about a character who’s trying to be a vigilante with a disability, causing other heroes problems and they're trying to get him out of the game before he hurts himself or others but they're pricks about it. There are hints and traces of this here and there but it could’ve been the whole story.

Lastly, probably the biggest issue outside of characters and plot is the central conflict. I just can’t bring myself to care about it. Circling back to the initial argument ala “I don’t think Jeremy loves or even likes these characters”, that may be too harsh but at times this book is very harsh to these characters and it never feels like it’s flowing organically. It’s like Red-light, Green-light, and for every chapter that brings the heroes one step closer, you have to wait an ungodly time focusing on things like the Super-Simulation that doesn’t even make sense within the internal logic of the story itself (I mean couldn’t you just construct a danger-room scenario, with a bunch of telepaths and mind manipulators to create an artificial simulation?) All this aside, I could make a million comparisons but the initial take-away should be this. If you’re going to keep burdening your protagonists then what’s the point?

Honestly, I felt like Zach Snyder wrote this book.

[sabrina caho · Rating 1 out of 5]

The miracle cure is like the original sin to all sins. I’m tired of disabilities overcome in the easy way. Yeah, let’s fix the blindness of the main character by giving him, wait for it, sight!

Even better if the sight comes with instant knowledge of colors, shapes, depth perception and all those little things normal babies take many years to learn.

*sigh*

Children trying to pass as mature rational adults, shocker! Especially when most adults are not mature or rational, kids can clearly do a much better job.

*sigh*

Superpowers are in the DNA, explains why they have so little racial diversity.

*sigh*

Women are fundamental for reproduction, maybe that’s the reason the only woman in the book is the mother and she dies to nurture mommy issues. Oh, I almost forgot the useless deaf girl with super hearing and other less memorable characters.

*sigh*

About The Ables in ten hours or less audiobook: The voice fast speaking in a short youtube video is funny and all, I’m a subscriber, I love it! But a whole audiobook narrated by him, sounds like chipmunks. Ha.

Sentence: proofread needed.
*ch11 "clearly losing patience with my rambling."*

[Geordie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really, really wanted to like this book.

It's the story of a group of disabled boys with super-powers. There's some fun adventure to this book, a good coming-of-age story, and it really has its heart in the right place with its treatment of the disabled. But there is so, so very much train-wreck to this book that I just can't enjoy it.

I felt like I couldn't go two pages without something jolting me out of suspension of disbelief. A boy in a wheelchair 'scampers'. The blind MC gains the ability to see, and he automatically knows colors, standards of beauty, how to read, etc, etc. He's able to see by linking with his telepathic friend and everyone's blown away by how clever this is... isn't this obvious? Just me? Why did no one else in this super-powered society think of this? Some of them have super intelligence, why...? Just, so much why. I never had the feeling the characters were actually disabled, the writing was inconsistent so often.

What really bugged me was that the home town of super-heroes has a big public school event where students fight simulated crimes as training. The city won't let disabled kids take part because it's too dangerous, but it's NOT too dangerous for normal 12 year olds??? These kids can fly, run 100s of miles an hour, break stone walls with their fists, etc., in what sane world would any adults let children engage in simulations that could end with them dead? I love manga as much as the next nerd, but this is trying to be a realistic approach to super-heroics, the whole concept is ludicrous. And let's add, super-powers are kept secret from anyone under 12 - how do they have this very public simulation kept secret from smaller kids in the town? Never revealed, like so many other things, it's hand-waved if it doesn't fit the story.

And so much is hand-waved, or cliche. And YES, as so many other reviewers mention, there are almost no relevant female characters in the whole book. And I'm not accusing the author of sexism, I'm just baffled why??? Making one of the main characters female would have been more realistic (only quarter of the kids in the class for the disabled are female, why?), made for more interesting group dynamics, and just plain made economic sense for reaching a wider audience... why, Mr. Scott, why?

The whole book feels like it was written by a comic book lover with a warm heart, then edited by a broken beer bottle. I would literally buy and reread this book if it were edited from the ground-floor up. If you can read books like some people watch Transformers movies, staying engrossed even as the plot staggers wildly, and things happen that make no sense (again and again), then you might like this book. But really, please demand more.

**Edit (21 Feb '20); Forgot to mention, the voice of this book also drove me nuts! It was told in the past tense, as if in a past narration, and this was driven in repeatedly. "I later knew...", "At the time...", "I couldn't have realized...", etc. Which, firstly, is very distracting to be using it so often. And second, drains out the suspense because we now KNOW that the protagonist isn't going to die. Just irritating!**

[Mo · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 out of 5 stars. It was okay.

I really wanted to like this book. I'm subscribed to CinemaSins, I love their videos, and when I found out Jeremy Scott had written a book, I was excited to read it. The cover looks intriguing, the title is short but interesting. It's a story about a kid who's blind but has superpowers in a town full of superpowered-people. How could it not be good?

Well. Here we are.

The main thing that really ruined this book for me was the monumental amount of telling instead of showing. There are times where someone will say something in dialogue and the narrator, Phillip, will then tell the reader what it means was just said. Or, something funny will happen and Phillip will proceed to explain why it was funny. That's not including all the times we don't even get to see something happen or be said, we just get Phillip TELLING us it happened. For example:

"We talked to Donnie plenty -- don't get me wrong. We would say something about Old Lady Crouch -- that's what we called her, somewhat affectionately -- and then turn to him and say things like "Isn't that right, Donnie?"

The reader isn't show that this is how they talk to Donnie, we're just told that.

Another example:

"Now it's important to note that Henry's wheelchair was relatively new -- it had been a birthday present several weeks prior."

This is about halfway into the book, and this is the only mention of Henry's birthday. We don't get to see Henry's birthday celebrations. We never hear any of the characters mention Henry's birthday. Nope. We're just told it happened several weeks after the fact.

And one more example, for good measure:

"He'd talked for almost fifteen minutes straight as he and I sat on the picnic table in Mr. Charles' cornfield."

I can't give details about that scene because it has spoilers, but I'll sum it up as best I can. A character and Phillip have a long and important conversation, and we aren't show about 99% of it. There's like 4 or 5 lines of dialogue, and the rest is summed up by Phillip after the fact. It would be like if you didn't get to see the final play of the Super Bowl, you just got the play by play told to you by someone who didn't anything about sports.

The characters aren't very interesting. All the adults are incredibly one sided and dull. Even the hero, Phillip, doesn't have any personality beyond being the hero. His friends have some sort of resemblance of identities. For example, there's Bentley, whose superpower is that he's really smart. Now, that could give potential to some complex character arc, but nope. The author just uses him as a means to spout out a lot of exposition.

As for the plot, by the time anything really important started happening, I was so bored and so uninterested in these characters I couldn't care less when something really bad happened.

[Desiree · Rating 5 out of 5]

OH EM GEE THIS BOOK!



(Okay.. I just needed to get that out.)

The premise of the book is that there really are superheroes in the world, that go by the term custodians. And the main character, Phillip Sallinger, has superpowers but is also blind, therefore having to overcome his blindness to be able to use his superpower. The book starts with him going to school and building a team with his other disabled superhero friends and just goes on from there… (I’m trying to avoid spoilers here.)

STOP READING HERE IF YOU HAVEN'T READ YET!

So the team, which call themselves the Ables after a legendary team of superheroes, join a hero simulation at their school, but while on the simulation they witness a true villain breaking into the public library. (THE PUBLIC LIBRARY??) And they try to find out what happens and BAM! he gets in the way of that! But who could he be?!? (Seriously, it’s probably you who think it will be but you should still read to find out because HOLY TOLEDO, BATMAN! THIS IS SUCH A GOOD TWIST!)

And what is the super-villain after?! Well…. the reincarnation of the superhero equivalent of an all powerful god (part of the original Ables legend.) Le duh. You didn’t see that coming?! (Neither did I.)

How do Phillip and his friends stop the super-villain and save the town? Read and find out! :)

Reveiwed on personal blog: A good book and a cup of coffee...

[Tabea Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book with all my heart and always will!

[Emily Luebke · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well... I made it. Oof. What can be said about this book except: it WAS NOT ready for publication. Just because a book has no/few spelling errors does not make it ready for publication. Jeremy Scott is obviously a novice and clearly had no one to take a firm hand and correct his many story telling missteps.

The characters ranged from cardboard to deeply unlikable. The MC was downright despise-able. He never grew or learned. He only leaned in harder to being an insufferable ass. His "friends" exist to help him and make him look better.

The only women in this book are in like 2 scenes or they get fridged real hard.

The climax... double oof. There were elements I could like... if it was written by someone who had much more practice under their belt. Jeremy Scott did not have the skill. So the climax was a disastrous mess that made me wish I had laser eyes to use on this book.

No action in this book ever happened without multiple chapters of character TALKING about the action that was going to happen. Thanks, I hate it.

Want my purest, realest, in the moment thoughts? Check out my read along on youtube! https://youtu.be/j3COU3z1gxc

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

You should know first that I am fan of Cinema Sins. Jeremy is half the writing team behind Cinema Sins and the narrator so when I saw on their Youtube channel that Jeremy had written a book I figured that I should check it out. It didn’t hurt that John Dies at the End author David Wong has a nice little quote up over on the book’s website. I jumped when I saw that Netgalley had it up. The Ables is about a secret society of superpowered peoples living around us. We don’t see them but they are there protecting us from both regular criminals and from super-powered individuals who do not have out best interests at heart. So when Phillip Sallinger learns that he has inherited superpowers he absolutely ecstatic; even if his telekinesis is difficult to use due to his blindness.


Phillip is placed in a special education class at his new superhero school along with other youths whose special abilities are impaired by physical or mental disabilities. Phillip is dead set on not letting his disability affect his ability to be a Custodian. Things really kick-off with the introduction of the SuperSim; an event where super-powered adults create a town wide Danger Room like situation where teams of super-powered kids can try their hand at super-heroics without the risk of the real-world. Overcoming some adversity Phillip and his other classmates take their first steps towards being superheroes only fail pretty spectacularly. However, it’s this failure that spurs them onward toward exploring their abilities in new and deeper ways in order to find a way to overcome their physical limitations.

The Ables would be an entertaining book if it was just watching these kids experiment with their abilities. Scott comes up with some creative and fun ways for these kids to use their abilities and it’s an absolutely joy to experience each little triumph along the way. However, there are darker doings going on in the background of The Ables’ world as full-fledged Custodians are disappearing and a mysterious figure keeps taunting Phillip and his friends. Scott doesn’t flinch from putting his hero through the wringer and he does an excellent job at describing the emotional aftermath of the handful of traumatic events Phillip faces throughout the novel.

While I found The Ables conclusion to be initially entertaining, Scott really stacks the odds against the heroes, some last minute twists and revelations felt a little too contrived for comfort. The novel’s final heroic reveal was telegraphed a bit too neatly for my tasted. Then again, Scott’s target audience is not a 33-year old somewhat jaded fan of genre fiction so the book’s final revelation might come as more of a surprise. The Ables is an entertaining and exciting read whose vibrant characters leap off the page. I definitely anyone looking for an excellent bit of middle-grade fiction give Jeremey Scott’s The Ables. For avid Cinema Sins fans I feel it worth also noting that Scott himself reads the audiobook version. Both the print and audiobook versions of The Ables are available now.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. It’s never good when you’re actively counting down the pages until the end of a book. Let’s start with what I liked. Obviously, I thought it was great to have disabled superheroes-it’s a cool concept. I liked that they all worked really hard to get used to their powers and their plans always went terribly. Nothing felt easy and there were real stakes. I also (mostly) liked the end confrontation, it was definitely the most into the book that I got.

Things I didn’t like (in no particular order):
1. The structure/ pacing of the book. The pacing is SO STRANGE. It cuts off at weird points in the action or right after the action and jumps forward random amounts of time, and then the narrator has to go back and describe it anyway. It’s so jarring, and it mostly seems like the author doesn’t know how or want to write any real emotional moments.

2. The lack of women/girls.

3. They way the disabilities were used with their powers. I thought we were going to get ways that their disabilities would actually enhance their powers-like, if you can’t use telekinesis well without sight, but you’re blind and used to doing it that way, then if all the lights go out, you’d have an inherent advantage, etc. That’s not what we got. It was more about giving sight back to the blind and such.

4. The way the author describes how a blind person would think. I just don’t think they’d think about facial expressions, or know what faces are beautiful the first time they could see, or describe things with colors when they couldn’t see. There were just several times I noticed things like this.

5. The villain. Yes, just what we want: a villain who knows he’s a bad guy. Not just a badguy, but a BAD guy. Like, what make villains interesting is that they think they’re good guys.

6. The world building. The town didn’t feel like a town and the people didn’t feel like people. The rest of the superhero world felt like cardboard bc it barely existed.

7. Several little plot things that were so ridiculous and stupid, including but not limited to: a) That fucking prophesy, man. Like, I could kind of buy it if it was predicting when someone was going to be born, but not this dumb thing. b) Some of these kids get placed in a special ed class for literally no reason? You cannot tell me that someone with asthma or in a wheelchair needs to be in special ed. I could’ve understood it if it was a separate class for learning how to used their powers in relation to their disabilities, but it’s just a whole separate class all day and no one can use their powers at school anyway.

[Aca · Rating 2 out of 5]

❤

This book has an excellent and intriguing premise, but a lousy execution.

The whole idea of superheroes with disabilities and how it effects their powers is really interesting and I was very pumped up at the beginning. And then, it became repetitive. They mostly did very similar thing over and over again with not much development.

I couldn't really relate to any of the characters. Bentley was my favourite because he made the story move forward and had some clever ideas (because of his powers). I liked how they made super intelligence superpower too. But other than him, others were bland and boring. I couldn't distinguish some of the main character, which striked me as alarming.

Also, there are literally no meaningful female characters whatsoever. Even though there are few girls with interesting powers in the disability class, none of them joined the Ables team. There was one point in the book where they were hanging out with one girl whose power was weather manipulation and I expected her to join the team then. When she didn't, the main character even commented how he was glad she wasn't part of the team because she would just slow them down. I mean, it really disappointed me.

The plot twist was painfully predictable to the point I couldn't believe they actually went with it. The main 'sad death' had no effect because we didn't develop any attachment for the character in question. The ending was plain dumb.

All in all, great foundation, but the house broke down anyway.

❤

[Thegirlintheafternoon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read for the Lawrence Library Summer Reading Challenge

I really can't properly express how disappointed I was by this book. I wanted to love it! It's got such a great premise: disabled superhero kids learning how to navigate their powers in the context of their disabilities? That is a GREAT premise. But this book was held back by being easily 100 pages too long; inconsistent characterization; exposition-heavy dialogue and an adult-looking-back-on-childhood narration device that undercut any tension the book built up without offering a reason for its own presence; needless, digressionary plot complications; some borderline offensive depictions of disability (particularly the intellectually disabled character, who is infantilized to an astounding degree); and a frankly shocking lack of women characters. I know I'm really piling on here, but it's out of disappointment; the bones of an excellent book are here, but this really should have been a first draft, not a final product. 1.5/5 stars.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, I liked this book. I picked it just because of the cover and I needed something to read on the plane. The idea of a group of disabled kids who are super heroes and need to learn how to use their powers to overcome their disabilities sounds amazing and it is...there were just a few things that took me out of the novel. One, besides the mother and a teacher, there were no women or girls in this book. The author talked about a deaf girl whose super power was super hearing...and I was hoping she'd come back...but she didn't. Two, I wish I could have learned more about the characters. What I did learn, I really liked but there could have been more. And three, there could have been more to this book in general. It almost felt like the author really wanted to write a screen play and wrote a book instead.

But I did like it. Really.

[Gergana]

Read from September 27 to 30, 2015
It's not bad, but it's just... inconsistent, repetitive, predictable, depressing, hard-to-follow towards the end, inconsistent x 20, illogical and boring... Not to mention THERE ARE NO GIRLS! Only one female side-character out of 20+ and she dies half way through. The villain was scary, but annoying. NO!

[Sara Roncero-Menendez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was everything I wanted: humor, drama, adventure, plot twists. It was a ton of fun, I loved every moment and I could not put it down for long. I would pre-order a sequel in a heartbeat!

[Kenneth Glad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeg må erkende, at de senere års overflødighedshorn af superheltefilm har gjort, at jeg ikke har været specielt interesseret i superhelte i et godt stykke tid – med få undtagelser – men da jeg læste på nettet, at der var kommet en ny bog, der handlede om børn, der besad superkræfter men som også var handicappet, blev jeg nysgerrig. Det lød tilpas originalt og friskt til at fange min interesse – og heldigvis da.
Bogen handler om Philip, en blind dreng på 12 år, hvis superkraft er telekinese. Philip er sammen med sine forældre og lillebroren Patrick flyttet fra New York til den lille by Freepoint, der er befolket dels af superhelte og dels af almindelige mennesker, der støtter superheltene. Der er imidlertid ikke ret mange mennesker, der kender til superheltene, der dog ikke omtaler sig selv som superhelte, men som custodians – opsynsmænd, vogtere (bogen er i øvrigt ikke tilgængelig på dansk på nuværende tidspunkt).
På Philips nye skole skal han gå i specialklassen sammen med andre børn, der ligesom ham selv har et handicap. Der er for eksempel Henry, der sidder i kørestol, fordi han er født som krøbling, men han har evnen til at læse tanker, og Bentley, som har ataxic cerebral parese, samtidig med at hans superevne er mentale kræfter, så han er superklog og kan meget hurtigt forøge sin viden.
Børnene i specialklassen er skolens outsidere, der bliver set skævt til, og de må ikke være med i skolens årlige ’superheltekonkurrence’. Sidenhen kommer de dog ud for noget, der stiller en smule mere barske krav til deres evner, end skolens konkurrence nogensinde ville kunne formå, men hvad der sker, vil jeg selvfølgelig overlade til dig at læse dig frem til.
The Ables er en velskrevet bog, der er både rørende og spændende. Den handler om venskab og kampen for at blive accepteret i et samfund, hvor det ikke er alle, der mener, at man passer ind – og så handler den selvfølgelig om, at en gruppe af handicappede børn skal arbejde sammen for at overkomme deres respektive handicap og finde ud af, hvordan de bedst kan bruge deres evner.
Jeremy Scott er en kendt youtuber med flere millioner følgere, og med sin debutroman formår han at skabe et spændende univers og nogle sympatiske karakterer med nogle meget menneskelige træk på trods af deres superkræfter, og selv om bogen handler om en flok 12årige børn, bør man ikke lade sig skræmme væk på forhånd, og med sine 364 sider er det ikke en bog, man blæser igennem på et par timer. Den får i hvert fald en stor anbefaling med på vejen fra mig.