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Whoosh! Bam! Pow! #3
Covenant
Sarah Buchanan lives a quiet, small town life, hiding one dangerous secret. She’s the world-famous superhero known as Skyrider, leader of the government-sanctioned superteam the Covenant. Not even her husband knows about her dual life. When a legion of superpowered dervishes declare war on America, the Covenant must work around the clock to track down the mastermind behind them. With Sarah spending less and less time and home, and her excuses running thin on why she keeps showing up covered with bruises, the strain on her marriage reaches a breaking point. She wants nothing more than to quit being Skyrider and return to ordinary life, but when ghosts from her past threaten the world she faces the ultimate Can she save the world and still save her marriage? Covenant Five heroes united to serve mankind. Skyrider! The champion of the skies. Chimpion! A cybernetically enhanced chimpanzee and master of martial arts. Servant! The invulnerable strongman. App! The world’s first open-source superhero, able to download an array of body hacks. Steam-Dragon! The mechanical marvel with razor sharp claws.
277 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 11, 2017
10 people are currently reading
45 people want to read
About the author
James Maxey
96 books188 followersI've been an avid reader since I first picked up a book. Luckily, I was within biking distance of three different libraries growing up. I was a skinny kid. If only I had maintained that link between biking and reading, I might be a skinny adult.
I'm also a writer. I wrote my first book as a kid, an adventure about pirates and ghosts. When I was a teenager, I used to write superhero adventures. Then I went to college and was steered toward writing "literature." It took me several years to shake that off, and today I write the sort of books I devoured by the shelf when I was sixteen, fast-paced fantasy, SF, and superhero adventures, which I use to explore deeper questions about life. My goal is to always be thought-provoking and always be fun.
I've had short stories in about a dozen anthologies and magazines. My novels to date are:
Nobody Gets the Girl
The Dragon Age trilogy
Bitterwood
Dragonforge
Dragonseed
Burn Baby Burn
The Dragon Apocalypse
Greatshadow (January 2012) -- A team of superpowered adventurers are recruited by the Church of the Book to extinguish the primal dragon of fire, Greatshadow.
Hush (July 2012) -- An effort to complete a quest for a fallen friend, the warrior woman Infidel stumbles onto a plot to kill Glorious, the primal dragon of the sun, and plunge the world into permanent cold and darkness, the elemental domain of the dragon Hush.
Witchbreaker (January 2013) -- A young witch named Sorrow has lost control of her magic after tapping into the spirit of Rott, the primal dragon of decay. Her desperate quest to save what remains of her humanity leads to an uneasy alliance with an amnesiatic warrior who might be the legendary champion of the church known as the Witchbreaker. But can there combined powers prevail when they trigger the wrath of Tempest, the primal dragon of storms?
I'm also a writer. I wrote my first book as a kid, an adventure about pirates and ghosts. When I was a teenager, I used to write superhero adventures. Then I went to college and was steered toward writing "literature." It took me several years to shake that off, and today I write the sort of books I devoured by the shelf when I was sixteen, fast-paced fantasy, SF, and superhero adventures, which I use to explore deeper questions about life. My goal is to always be thought-provoking and always be fun.
I've had short stories in about a dozen anthologies and magazines. My novels to date are:
Nobody Gets the Girl
The Dragon Age trilogy
Bitterwood
Dragonforge
Dragonseed
Burn Baby Burn
The Dragon Apocalypse
Greatshadow (January 2012) -- A team of superpowered adventurers are recruited by the Church of the Book to extinguish the primal dragon of fire, Greatshadow.
Hush (July 2012) -- An effort to complete a quest for a fallen friend, the warrior woman Infidel stumbles onto a plot to kill Glorious, the primal dragon of the sun, and plunge the world into permanent cold and darkness, the elemental domain of the dragon Hush.
Witchbreaker (January 2013) -- A young witch named Sorrow has lost control of her magic after tapping into the spirit of Rott, the primal dragon of decay. Her desperate quest to save what remains of her humanity leads to an uneasy alliance with an amnesiatic warrior who might be the legendary champion of the church known as the Witchbreaker. But can there combined powers prevail when they trigger the wrath of Tempest, the primal dragon of storms?
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 26, 2018
Despite the unfortunate series title "Whoosh! Bam! Pow!", James Maxey's superhero trilogy has been a real treat to read this past month. It is full of snarky humor, characters with imaginative powers, and a mix-mash of action scenes, time travel weirdness, and theoretical physics.
It has been a year since the conclusion of Burn Baby Burn, and a new terrorist threat has emerged. Mysterious dervishes appear without warning in crowded places and behead private citizens at random. They are using tech that none of the Covenant superheroes have seen before and seem to have no way of stopping.
Covenant was so much fun partly because throwaway scenes from earlier books suddenly resonate in unexpected ways, giving the universe more of a lived-in feeling. The author allows character interactions to flourish despite the frenetic pace of the story. The superhero team concept--think Avengers or Justice League made up of people with god-like powers but only marginal social skills--allowed him to underpin madcap plots with realistic interpersonal tensions.
Katrina Knowbokov struggles with the consequences of her decisions to kill her husband at the end of Nobody Gets the Girl. One daughter Amelia is living in self-exile in Mars. Sarah chafes at the burdens of leadership; she tried to help many of the criminals abused by her late father, only to have them turn against her and resume their lives of crime.
Servant the Christian Superman is still a pompous ass ("We're from the government. We're here to help."), but this time his faith his treated as more than a punchline and a real character begins to develop underneath the exterior.
App is still an open-source superhero who lets hackers program new powers for him. This time out, he has increased his toolbox to include ghost mode, dense mode, acid mode, foam mode, ink mode, frog mode, glue mode and clone mode. He is even more addicted to social media: "You know how some people can't stop looking at their phone? My whole brain is a like a smartphone now. If I'm not seeing tweets about me at every moment I start wondering if I really exist. I trend, therefore I am."
It is difficult to talk too much without ruining some of the twists. I will only say, Well done! The door was left open for more sequels, so hopefully this will not be the last adventure.
It has been a year since the conclusion of Burn Baby Burn, and a new terrorist threat has emerged. Mysterious dervishes appear without warning in crowded places and behead private citizens at random. They are using tech that none of the Covenant superheroes have seen before and seem to have no way of stopping.
Covenant was so much fun partly because throwaway scenes from earlier books suddenly resonate in unexpected ways, giving the universe more of a lived-in feeling. The author allows character interactions to flourish despite the frenetic pace of the story. The superhero team concept--think Avengers or Justice League made up of people with god-like powers but only marginal social skills--allowed him to underpin madcap plots with realistic interpersonal tensions.
Katrina Knowbokov struggles with the consequences of her decisions to kill her husband at the end of Nobody Gets the Girl. One daughter Amelia is living in self-exile in Mars. Sarah chafes at the burdens of leadership; she tried to help many of the criminals abused by her late father, only to have them turn against her and resume their lives of crime.
Servant the Christian Superman is still a pompous ass ("We're from the government. We're here to help."), but this time his faith his treated as more than a punchline and a real character begins to develop underneath the exterior.
App is still an open-source superhero who lets hackers program new powers for him. This time out, he has increased his toolbox to include ghost mode, dense mode, acid mode, foam mode, ink mode, frog mode, glue mode and clone mode. He is even more addicted to social media: "You know how some people can't stop looking at their phone? My whole brain is a like a smartphone now. If I'm not seeing tweets about me at every moment I start wondering if I really exist. I trend, therefore I am."
It is difficult to talk too much without ruining some of the twists. I will only say, Well done! The door was left open for more sequels, so hopefully this will not be the last adventure.
May 29, 2018
Very pleasing 4-star rating! Best book of the series for sure!
"Covenant" wraps up the 3-story Superteam - or I guess as some editions call it the 'WHOOSH! BAM! POW!' trifecta - story-line and I have to say, this is Maxey's strongest book of the run. The characters are much more real this time and their interactions - yep, the classic superteam full of quarrels and conflicting personalities - works really well. There are a lot of loose ends from the first two books tidied up and all-in-all, it all came together better than some of the speculative bits from waaaaaaay out in left field of certainly at least the 2nd book (Space Donuts?).
Don't let the cover turn you off (or the bucketful of typos), 'cause there's a lot of really weird goodness in this book that just seems to work in just the right way! Sure, I'm not entirely convinced this group would ever make it as a running comic series for any of the 'major' publishers, but the powers, quirkiness and back-stories all clicked here for me. And yes, I'm again putting it on my 'Young Adult' shelf because it's just a couple of curse words and an erection or firm breast away from being perfect there as well!
Oh and learning that the author is from the South, I have to say: putting these particular bad guys in their place - with their insane and all-too-real motivations (ye gods, wouldn't it be nice to do that to the bag of nutjobs across the US right now?) - is just icing on the cake! But oh man, do try and dial back taking all this too seriously (something I think I did with the first 2 books) because it gets a bit goofy in spots (Go Ninja Monkey, Go!! Really though: Chimpion? Ouchkabibble...)! But if you know that's the case, hey, enjoy the ride and keep your hands up in the loop-de-loop parts!
All in all, these pulp-y wee books were a fun little jaunt into one of my favorite genres and I'm more than happy to have spent the last few days enjoying all of them! Keep it real, True Believers!
"Covenant" wraps up the 3-story Superteam - or I guess as some editions call it the 'WHOOSH! BAM! POW!' trifecta - story-line and I have to say, this is Maxey's strongest book of the run. The characters are much more real this time and their interactions - yep, the classic superteam full of quarrels and conflicting personalities - works really well. There are a lot of loose ends from the first two books tidied up and all-in-all, it all came together better than some of the speculative bits from waaaaaaay out in left field of certainly at least the 2nd book (Space Donuts?).
Don't let the cover turn you off (or the bucketful of typos), 'cause there's a lot of really weird goodness in this book that just seems to work in just the right way! Sure, I'm not entirely convinced this group would ever make it as a running comic series for any of the 'major' publishers, but the powers, quirkiness and back-stories all clicked here for me. And yes, I'm again putting it on my 'Young Adult' shelf because it's just a couple of curse words and an erection or firm breast away from being perfect there as well!
Oh and learning that the author is from the South, I have to say: putting these particular bad guys in their place - with their insane and all-too-real motivations (ye gods, wouldn't it be nice to do that to the bag of nutjobs across the US right now?) - is just icing on the cake! But oh man, do try and dial back taking all this too seriously (something I think I did with the first 2 books) because it gets a bit goofy in spots (Go Ninja Monkey, Go!! Really though: Chimpion? Ouchkabibble...)! But if you know that's the case, hey, enjoy the ride and keep your hands up in the loop-de-loop parts!
All in all, these pulp-y wee books were a fun little jaunt into one of my favorite genres and I'm more than happy to have spent the last few days enjoying all of them! Keep it real, True Believers!
October 19, 2017
Natural consequences are an interesting thing in superhero novels, and this one is full of them. There are interesting twists and complexities of character that are interesting, if not a huge amount of depth, but the ways the powers work and how they shape the personalities of the people who have them are fascinating.
February 26, 2018
Maxes does it again
So...I did a smart thing and subscribed to Maxes on Amazon. I loved the first two books and couldn’t wait for the next. I got the email this morning that the third one was available, downloaded it instantly, and just finished it. It’s just such a great combination of campy superheroes and real human drama, both humor and thriller.
So...I did a smart thing and subscribed to Maxes on Amazon. I loved the first two books and couldn’t wait for the next. I got the email this morning that the third one was available, downloaded it instantly, and just finished it. It’s just such a great combination of campy superheroes and real human drama, both humor and thriller.
December 18, 2020
Great superhero story
Battling supervillains or your own inner demons, which is harder? This book certainly approaches the demons with a clear understanding of what they are and how to deal with them. Now I kind of wish I read books 1 and 2 first.
Battling supervillains or your own inner demons, which is harder? This book certainly approaches the demons with a clear understanding of what they are and how to deal with them. Now I kind of wish I read books 1 and 2 first.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews