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StreetSlam: Wishes of A Broken Time
After the death of his mother, Devin Maxwell joins Titan Force, an organization that collects supernatural artifacts using super powered agents. Devin quickly rises to become a brash, yet successful agent under the field name: Streetslam. He forms a pseudo family with his friends and fellow agents at Titan Force.
Devin's allegiances are put to the test after an enigmatic billionaire offers him the chance to revive his mother, but only if he turns on his new family and steals a mysterious item from the Titan Force vault.
Devin's allegiances are put to the test after an enigmatic billionaire offers him the chance to revive his mother, but only if he turns on his new family and steals a mysterious item from the Titan Force vault.
- GenresYoung Adult
846 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 18, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 27, 2017
It took me ages to read but it was still amazing!
June 8, 2017
In my opinion this book was a mixed bag, but I feel like the genre was a big part of that - specifically, the shounen anime genre (includes Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Dragon Ball series, My Hero Academy, etc). Most of the complaints I have could be applied to the average shounen anime, so I don't want to sell it short: if you like those series, I think this book is perfect for you and you should go check it out right now because it's 1 or 2 dollars and you get a lot of book for your money. The main characters have heart and you care for them, which is a real feat considering the main character can be a conceited jerk - but he has so much heart and you are with him every step of the way through his journey, through his ups and downs, through his successes and losses. The action is strong. The prose and writing are strong. Langford definitely has a voice.
But, like shounen anime, there are quite a lot of characters, very many story threads (many of which are unresolved by the end of this volume), pacing issues, and repetitive battles that are just escalating mega-attacks of elements or energy beams that have special names.
I think the story could use another edit so that the main plot is stronger through the first third or fourth of the book (after Wayne's introduction it becomes much stronger and continues through the end of the book). On the other side of that, I really loved how unpredictable the beginning of the book was, and felt that that unpredictability was lost once the main plot really started.
I think that where possible, minor characters should be combined and/or given a stronger individual character voice.
But, like shounen anime, there are quite a lot of characters, very many story threads (many of which are unresolved by the end of this volume), pacing issues, and repetitive battles that are just escalating mega-attacks of elements or energy beams that have special names.
I think the story could use another edit so that the main plot is stronger through the first third or fourth of the book (after Wayne's introduction it becomes much stronger and continues through the end of the book). On the other side of that, I really loved how unpredictable the beginning of the book was, and felt that that unpredictability was lost once the main plot really started.
I think that where possible, minor characters should be combined and/or given a stronger individual character voice.
October 21, 2019
Oh boy, how to begin this review? Well, I had high expectations for this book because I wanted to support an indie author of diverse superheroes who had the luck to go viral on social media. And truthfully, I do want Leonard Langford to succeed in what he’s trying to do, but I also want him to learn from this book and (hopefully) revise it in the future when/if he has the chance to get beta readers and editors to help him.
In a nutshell: This book is a power fantasy, plain and simple. There's good things about power fantasies in fiction, but there can be many bad things, too, especially when the fantasies throw other people under the bus to prop them up.
I don’t want people to think I’m writing this review because I like to hate things; one check of my profile and past book reviews will tell you that I tend to be pretty generous with stars, especially where debut authors are concerned. Mostly, I rate things on how much I enjoyed reading them, aka the writer’s storytelling ability. Tbh, this book was just not enjoyable enough to be worth more than maybe 1.5 stars as is because it was essentially a slog from beginning to end, albeit with intermittent vivid imagery and plenty of action scenes. I’m not expecting perfection when it comes to diverse books, but this entire thing seemed like a first draft that people had to pay money to read, and that’s just plain unprofessional.
So let’s break that down into the good and the bad, as I usually do in my reviews:
The Good
- There was a lot of vivid imagery, leaving almost no doubt about what people or things or the action and associated weaponry were supposed to look like. I also liked the monsters and tech featured in the books because they were pretty cool.
- The superheroes were all fairly diverse and there were several characters of color, which is sorely needed in this often one-note genre with its overabundance of white male superheroes. As in, I can appreciate a book that’s trying to add representation where it is lacking, because I’m trying to do the same for my own stories and favorite genres.
- I liked the action scenes (but there was an over-abundance of them, which I’ll get to in the next section).
- Occasionally Devin’s and other characters’ humor and quips were pretty good, e.g. the iconic, “White people are dead and we’re getting’ the hell out of here!”
- One of the major plot points that pissed me off to no end and led to me writing fanfic for this book out of spite (why me?) was fortunately resolved at the 100% mark of the 846 pages, though I'm still salty about the characters involved getting put on a metaphorical bus.
- If people liked the tropes of Shounen anime/manga, then they’d probably like this more than I did. Actually, if this were adapted as an anime or manga, it’d probably be a lot more enjoyable and would naturally cut out a lot of the stuff that kept repeating.
- There were a lot of flashbacks, but fortunately they weren’t too horribly jarring and clearly marked with italics.
The Bad (brace yourselves because this is gonna be long)
- I gave up on marking the typos, spacing errors, overly-long sentences, and other problems because it would have taken too long to mark all of them and no one asked me to edit this book, either. Suffice it to say that there are way too many for a book that’s officially published, marketed to the public, and that people paid money to read.
- This book repeats things waaaaaay too much, especially character descriptions (eye color, hair color, skin color, etc.) and certain descriptions during action scenes such as “his eyes widened”, “his eyes grew wide” and similar variants. I swear, if I see another variant on the latter ever again in my lifetime, it will too damn soon because it was in this book probably hundreds of times. I now want to purge it from my own stories and salt the earth where it grew; I hate it that much.
- The way things are described get really strange like the bodies are completely detached into separate autonomous objects, a la “her green eyes moved to look at him” and similar such that I got the impression of eyes literally moving from the body to look at another character.
- Also sometimes characters’ names and descriptions got mixed up which is kind of weird considering how much descriptions were repeated otherwise.
- I appreciate that there was a lot of action in this book, but sometimes it lasted for literal chapters, which is too damn long. Approximately half of this book or more is just action scenes without characters showing much self-reflection or character growth and after a while, the style of action got so repetitive that I had to skim or else I would be bored out of my mind. It’s okay to have a fake out ending to a fight, but when the fake outs happen multiple times with every godsdamned fight and keep it going for ages, the reader is going to start looking at their watch and wonder when the hell it’s going to end.
- To sum up the previous points: This book could have reduced its action scenes and descriptive scenes to a final page count of 500 pages or so, not 800+, and I highly doubt readers would have missed all that much.
- OKAY HERE’S A MAJOR ISSUE: Female characters were constantly being thrown under the bus for the sake of Devin’s ego, especially women of color.
Julia Maxwell: Devin’s mom, has to put up with his whining at the beginning of the story and then gets killed off and the rest of the story (contrary to what the blurb would have you believe) is not about Julia, but about Devin’s girlfriend of roughly one year rather than the woman who raised him.
Sonya Jackson:
Alicia Jackson: Sonya’s little sister,
Claire Donaldson:
Tanya Reinhart:
OH, AND DID I MENTION that all of these female characters (including the ones I didn't mention here but who are also in this book) are described as unnaturally beautiful? Are no female characters average-looking in this story? Do they all have to be supermodel hot?
- I feel the need to mention it again: There is a graphic depiction of self-harm in this book but we are not warned prior to reading it aka in the marketing post(s) that went viral on social media. Well, now y’all know and can avoid as necessary. (FYI it occurs once Tanya is introduced to the story.)
-Also, there’s a lot of fatphobia in this book. Because all the women in this book are described as unnaturally beautiful, the fatphobia concerns male characters instead, but it’s still shitty and not funny. Fat and obese characters are treated as the butt of jokes and described in a way that makes their characterization all about their weight. e.g. they don’t just have an arm, they have a “meaty arm” or they’re not just being picked up, “all hundreds of pounds of him” are picked up etc. etc. This is just a shitty thing to include in a book that’s supposedly inclusive, idk.
- A literal psychopath is conflated with people who have mental illnesses and who are interned in mental health hospitals and turns out to be one of the biggest villains of this story. Just wow. Where to even begin with how fucked up that is? Newsflash, writers: The mentally ill (especially those who are recognized as having problem and thus go to health professionals for treatment) are not an acceptable inspiration source for your villains. Be a better writer and do the hard work of actually creating good villains, rather than using ableist tropes.
- Per the previous points, the villains are all so comically cartoonish and overpowered but also make really stupid mistakes despite crowing about their cleverness every few pages. And to add insult to injury, they weren’t even humorously cartoonish, just frustrating. I couldn’t stop rolling my eyes whenever they appeared in the book.
- A random book of poetry inserts itself partway through the book and is never brought up again or relevant to the book in any way. Just whyyyyyy include it if it’s not even relevant to the plot?
- A teensy thing that I was hoping to see in a diverse book and didn’t hope to expect, but everyone in this book is weirdly straight? Like this book is uber-heteronormative and in such a huge cast of characters there’s really no reason not to acknowledge 10%+ of the population. Hell, I was feeling so starved of it by the end of 800+ pages that I’d even take background rep.
- I wanted to like Devin, but he was such a self-pitying and self-serving douchebag who apparently didn’t give a damn about how many casualties happened in the process of Titan Force and related activities that I just didn’t find him all that heroic. He can say he’s a hero all he wants, but I sure as hell don’t buy it based on his actions. I don’t want him to be a perfectly good person, but he refused to own up to his mistakes and accept their consequences, even in the end, and that’s just never a likeable quality in a person touted as one of the “good guys”.
- Also, weird religious stuff was inserted into the story, again, without any apparent rhyme or reason for it. Just why? What, exactly, is its purpose in the story?
TL;DR: Just because a book has diverse characters doesn’t mean that it has good storytelling. Also, just because a book has diversity doesn’t excuse it from needing editors, beta readers, sensitivity readers, or even a basic spellcheck software. Because I have a soft spot for indie writers and want all of them to succeed, I do hope the author learns from what’s been said in reviews and writes future installments more carefully. I think this story has many good concepts and memorable characters, but the execution leaves much to be desired.
In a nutshell: This book is a power fantasy, plain and simple. There's good things about power fantasies in fiction, but there can be many bad things, too, especially when the fantasies throw other people under the bus to prop them up.
I don’t want people to think I’m writing this review because I like to hate things; one check of my profile and past book reviews will tell you that I tend to be pretty generous with stars, especially where debut authors are concerned. Mostly, I rate things on how much I enjoyed reading them, aka the writer’s storytelling ability. Tbh, this book was just not enjoyable enough to be worth more than maybe 1.5 stars as is because it was essentially a slog from beginning to end, albeit with intermittent vivid imagery and plenty of action scenes. I’m not expecting perfection when it comes to diverse books, but this entire thing seemed like a first draft that people had to pay money to read, and that’s just plain unprofessional.
So let’s break that down into the good and the bad, as I usually do in my reviews:
The Good
- There was a lot of vivid imagery, leaving almost no doubt about what people or things or the action and associated weaponry were supposed to look like. I also liked the monsters and tech featured in the books because they were pretty cool.
- The superheroes were all fairly diverse and there were several characters of color, which is sorely needed in this often one-note genre with its overabundance of white male superheroes. As in, I can appreciate a book that’s trying to add representation where it is lacking, because I’m trying to do the same for my own stories and favorite genres.
- I liked the action scenes (but there was an over-abundance of them, which I’ll get to in the next section).
- Occasionally Devin’s and other characters’ humor and quips were pretty good, e.g. the iconic, “White people are dead and we’re getting’ the hell out of here!”
- One of the major plot points that pissed me off to no end and led to me writing fanfic for this book out of spite (why me?) was fortunately resolved at the 100% mark of the 846 pages, though I'm still salty about the characters involved getting put on a metaphorical bus.
- If people liked the tropes of Shounen anime/manga, then they’d probably like this more than I did. Actually, if this were adapted as an anime or manga, it’d probably be a lot more enjoyable and would naturally cut out a lot of the stuff that kept repeating.
- There were a lot of flashbacks, but fortunately they weren’t too horribly jarring and clearly marked with italics.
The Bad (brace yourselves because this is gonna be long)
- I gave up on marking the typos, spacing errors, overly-long sentences, and other problems because it would have taken too long to mark all of them and no one asked me to edit this book, either. Suffice it to say that there are way too many for a book that’s officially published, marketed to the public, and that people paid money to read.
- This book repeats things waaaaaay too much, especially character descriptions (eye color, hair color, skin color, etc.) and certain descriptions during action scenes such as “his eyes widened”, “his eyes grew wide” and similar variants. I swear, if I see another variant on the latter ever again in my lifetime, it will too damn soon because it was in this book probably hundreds of times. I now want to purge it from my own stories and salt the earth where it grew; I hate it that much.
- The way things are described get really strange like the bodies are completely detached into separate autonomous objects, a la “her green eyes moved to look at him” and similar such that I got the impression of eyes literally moving from the body to look at another character.
- Also sometimes characters’ names and descriptions got mixed up which is kind of weird considering how much descriptions were repeated otherwise.
- I appreciate that there was a lot of action in this book, but sometimes it lasted for literal chapters, which is too damn long. Approximately half of this book or more is just action scenes without characters showing much self-reflection or character growth and after a while, the style of action got so repetitive that I had to skim or else I would be bored out of my mind. It’s okay to have a fake out ending to a fight, but when the fake outs happen multiple times with every godsdamned fight and keep it going for ages, the reader is going to start looking at their watch and wonder when the hell it’s going to end.
- To sum up the previous points: This book could have reduced its action scenes and descriptive scenes to a final page count of 500 pages or so, not 800+, and I highly doubt readers would have missed all that much.
- OKAY HERE’S A MAJOR ISSUE: Female characters were constantly being thrown under the bus for the sake of Devin’s ego, especially women of color.
Julia Maxwell: Devin’s mom, has to put up with his whining at the beginning of the story and then gets killed off and the rest of the story (contrary to what the blurb would have you believe) is not about Julia, but about Devin’s girlfriend of roughly one year rather than the woman who raised him.
Sonya Jackson:
Alicia Jackson: Sonya’s little sister,
Claire Donaldson:
Tanya Reinhart:
OH, AND DID I MENTION that all of these female characters (including the ones I didn't mention here but who are also in this book) are described as unnaturally beautiful? Are no female characters average-looking in this story? Do they all have to be supermodel hot?
- I feel the need to mention it again: There is a graphic depiction of self-harm in this book but we are not warned prior to reading it aka in the marketing post(s) that went viral on social media. Well, now y’all know and can avoid as necessary. (FYI it occurs once Tanya is introduced to the story.)
-Also, there’s a lot of fatphobia in this book. Because all the women in this book are described as unnaturally beautiful, the fatphobia concerns male characters instead, but it’s still shitty and not funny. Fat and obese characters are treated as the butt of jokes and described in a way that makes their characterization all about their weight. e.g. they don’t just have an arm, they have a “meaty arm” or they’re not just being picked up, “all hundreds of pounds of him” are picked up etc. etc. This is just a shitty thing to include in a book that’s supposedly inclusive, idk.
- A literal psychopath is conflated with people who have mental illnesses and who are interned in mental health hospitals and turns out to be one of the biggest villains of this story. Just wow. Where to even begin with how fucked up that is? Newsflash, writers: The mentally ill (especially those who are recognized as having problem and thus go to health professionals for treatment) are not an acceptable inspiration source for your villains. Be a better writer and do the hard work of actually creating good villains, rather than using ableist tropes.
- Per the previous points, the villains are all so comically cartoonish and overpowered but also make really stupid mistakes despite crowing about their cleverness every few pages. And to add insult to injury, they weren’t even humorously cartoonish, just frustrating. I couldn’t stop rolling my eyes whenever they appeared in the book.
- A random book of poetry inserts itself partway through the book and is never brought up again or relevant to the book in any way. Just whyyyyyy include it if it’s not even relevant to the plot?
- A teensy thing that I was hoping to see in a diverse book and didn’t hope to expect, but everyone in this book is weirdly straight? Like this book is uber-heteronormative and in such a huge cast of characters there’s really no reason not to acknowledge 10%+ of the population. Hell, I was feeling so starved of it by the end of 800+ pages that I’d even take background rep.
- I wanted to like Devin, but he was such a self-pitying and self-serving douchebag who apparently didn’t give a damn about how many casualties happened in the process of Titan Force and related activities that I just didn’t find him all that heroic. He can say he’s a hero all he wants, but I sure as hell don’t buy it based on his actions. I don’t want him to be a perfectly good person, but he refused to own up to his mistakes and accept their consequences, even in the end, and that’s just never a likeable quality in a person touted as one of the “good guys”.
- Also, weird religious stuff was inserted into the story, again, without any apparent rhyme or reason for it. Just why? What, exactly, is its purpose in the story?
TL;DR: Just because a book has diverse characters doesn’t mean that it has good storytelling. Also, just because a book has diversity doesn’t excuse it from needing editors, beta readers, sensitivity readers, or even a basic spellcheck software. Because I have a soft spot for indie writers and want all of them to succeed, I do hope the author learns from what’s been said in reviews and writes future installments more carefully. I think this story has many good concepts and memorable characters, but the execution leaves much to be desired.
July 5, 2018
I literally stayed up all night reading this. I...I don't know what to say. I read this in between doing some work from home but otherwise I finished probably thirty minutes ago and it took me some time to get my thoughts together.
I think I found this book from Tumblr? I bought it to support the fact that it has non-white characters and was said to be inspired by anime.
A big warning: if something is said to be inspired by anime it is always inspired by shounens (Naruto, Bleach, Boku no Hero Academia, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, One Piece, etc.) and that isn't considered the high brow of anime. Shounens are checklist, cliche, and easily written not just for young people but especially boys. This novel is especially designed for boys, in my opinion, and I couldn't get into it.
I believe the descriptions and the action is top-notch. I think Leonard is able to describe very well and there was nothing I was lost on. He spends a lot of time on descriptions and I think that was really nice. I thought the story was interesting and there were lots of characters to know. Unfortunately you don't get a lot of resolution in this book and after looking through the author's twitter I don't think he's working on a second one. Doesn't even advertise the book anywhere.
The formatting and typos are all over the place. The representation of women in this book is typical of a shounen: beautiful women whose purpose is to only serve the male protagonist. It wouldn't bother me as much (as I'm used to it by now) if I wasn't led to believe that this book was going to be a completely different book from all other YA books. Even though you have people of color, you only have good looking and straight people. Why do people have to be so good looking? Why can't people just look how they look and maybe some people will find them good looking and some people won't? There are some fat people, but only fat dudes.
Unless you can draw, do not ever create a story that is inspired off anime and manga unless you are writing a light novel for a graphic novel. And for something as low-hanging as creating a shounen, it's not really that...interesting. Create some novels inspired by better anime, that is more cerebral and that can come out better in novel forms.
I wish Leonard luck, if he ever writes a second book. I'm glad that there is more literature coming out that incorporates people of color, LGBTQ+ populations, populations with disabilities, etc. But please, grammar check your stuff. It doesn't feel good to get something that finally represents you and it isn't well organized.
I think I found this book from Tumblr? I bought it to support the fact that it has non-white characters and was said to be inspired by anime.
A big warning: if something is said to be inspired by anime it is always inspired by shounens (Naruto, Bleach, Boku no Hero Academia, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, One Piece, etc.) and that isn't considered the high brow of anime. Shounens are checklist, cliche, and easily written not just for young people but especially boys. This novel is especially designed for boys, in my opinion, and I couldn't get into it.
I believe the descriptions and the action is top-notch. I think Leonard is able to describe very well and there was nothing I was lost on. He spends a lot of time on descriptions and I think that was really nice. I thought the story was interesting and there were lots of characters to know. Unfortunately you don't get a lot of resolution in this book and after looking through the author's twitter I don't think he's working on a second one. Doesn't even advertise the book anywhere.
The formatting and typos are all over the place. The representation of women in this book is typical of a shounen: beautiful women whose purpose is to only serve the male protagonist. It wouldn't bother me as much (as I'm used to it by now) if I wasn't led to believe that this book was going to be a completely different book from all other YA books. Even though you have people of color, you only have good looking and straight people. Why do people have to be so good looking? Why can't people just look how they look and maybe some people will find them good looking and some people won't? There are some fat people, but only fat dudes.
Unless you can draw, do not ever create a story that is inspired off anime and manga unless you are writing a light novel for a graphic novel. And for something as low-hanging as creating a shounen, it's not really that...interesting. Create some novels inspired by better anime, that is more cerebral and that can come out better in novel forms.
I wish Leonard luck, if he ever writes a second book. I'm glad that there is more literature coming out that incorporates people of color, LGBTQ+ populations, populations with disabilities, etc. But please, grammar check your stuff. It doesn't feel good to get something that finally represents you and it isn't well organized.
August 12, 2024
After the death of his mother, Devin Maxwell joins Titan Force, an organization that collects supernatural artifacts using super powered agents. Devin quickly rises to become a brash, yet successful agent under the field name: Streetslam. He forms a pseudo family with his friends and fellow agents at Titan Force.
Devin's allegiances are put to the test after an enigmatic billionaire offers him the chance to revive his mother, but only if he turns on his new family and steals a mysterious item from the Titan Force vault.
**
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