Luke’s dad has bought a lot of gadgets recently and not one of them works as it’s supposed to. Maybe it’s because a machine-from-the-future is stalking Bromley, playing havoc with all the tech and trying to stop Star Lad going on a date. Could this be the Rise of the Machines? Luke knows what he must do – he just needs his fellow SCARF members to help or it will be the end of everything…
David Solomons has been writing screenplays for many years. His first feature film was an adaptation of ‘Five Children and It’ (starring Kenneth Branagh and Eddie Izzard, with gala screenings at the Toronto and Tribeca Film Festivals). His latest film is a romantic comedy set in the world of publishing, ‘Not Another Happy Ending’ (Karen Gillan, Iain de Caestecker), which closed the Edinburgh International Film Festival. My Brother is a Superhero is his first novel for children. He was born in Glasgow and now lives in Dorset with his wife (and novelist) Natasha, and son, Luke.
This one is particularly funny with movie references that made me laugh out loud and an ending that gave me a real lump in my throat.
If you liked the first book or books, you'll love this one too. But you definitely need to read them in order and read the whole set to get the most out of it :)
This was very hilarious and the plot was quite good. I loved the thrilling climax! But I had to admit, at first, the ending was quite confusing, with all the time travel and stuff. But this book kinda had two bad guys, the a.I and Christopher Talbot. An amazing book, I must say.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
A super galactic five stars. Need a review in space. However, I might need to have breakfast before I unplug my toaster from a fantasy viewpoint. Check www.mrripleysenchantedbooks.com in a week or so, or time travel back. It's the latest rage.
An improvement over the previous book, but I can see why Solomons decided to end it here; overall it feels like he's run out of steam for this series.
There are two villain plots going on. One is blatantly Terminator, to the point where I'm annoyed that nobody, including sci-fi nerds Luke and Serge, lampshade the obvious similarities. It also would have been nice if we'd seen the apocalyptic robot future, but there's not actually much time travel in this book. (When we actually see it, it's popping back a year or so, so it's not super interesting.) The other villain is Christopher Talbot, who is a better character than Generic Ultron Clone, but his plot is stolen by the latter and we're thus deprived of seeing him in his morally dubious glory.
While I liked Talbot's evil plan more in theory, it actually falls apart if you think about it for a few seconds. Luke's way of stopping the plan is also weird and wouldn't really work. What if which incidentally, would be a better (though still very flawed) plan in the first place?
(This is also the second book I read this month where the author writes himself into the story. It still feels kind of self-indulgent.)
Incidentally, Luke also mentions offhandedly that . Can we read that story? It sounds like a more interesting finale than this one, and might have worked better with the subplot of Zack moving away, which winds up getting glossed over.
Actually, a big problem I had with these last two books is that, while fine as dumb superhero fun, they lack the emotional strength of the first three. The book ends with Luke finally realizing that he doesn't need to get superpowers, but it kind of feels like it came out of nowhere. Why not have something that Zack or Zorbon said prompt that revelation? Like if Zack said that ? That could have worked.
(Also, Josh kind of amounted to nothing. I don't know, books 2-3 seemed to be setting him up to eventually join S.C.A.R.F. or something. Instead he just gets mind controlled in the last two books.)
This review turned out more negative than I had expected. Like I said, it's not a terrible story, just not as strong an ending as I would have liked.
I can't believe this series have ended! This is such a page-turner series and it has helped me overcome my reading slumps many times and I'm sad to say goodbye to it. But I'm also happy it ended on such a satisfying note. Now watch me not realizing how much I'll miss waiting for a new book from this series to come out until two months later when it will suddenly hit me during a shower and then I'll cry.
(I still haven't read the fourth book but I can safely say I'll enjoy it as well.)