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Please Don't Tell My Parents #6
Please Don't Tell My Parents I Work for a Supervillain
What do you do when you have the wrong super powers? Magenta's older brother is a superhero. She's starting high school at the school where kids with powers go, including the famous Inscrutable Machine. Except, Magenta's powers are no good for fighting. Her potions are useful, not dangerous. Her other power is just humiliating. What Magenta has plenty of is determination, and she tries fighting a supervillain anyway.
281 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 4, 2021
50 people are currently reading
110 people want to read
About the author
Richard Roberts
24 books419 followersI've been writing for a long, long time. A long, long, long time. Do you remember when dirt was invented? I was using it to scratch out stories. Getting published was harder, but now I'm hooked up with Curiosity Quills and I have real books in paper, and you should buy some!
As a writer my fascination has always been children's literature, especially children's lit that is also adult lit. For some reason, this means that instead I write gothic light romance for fun, and very dark and tragic young adult books for passion. I love seeing the world through the eyes of strange people, and I believe that happy endings must be earned the hard way. There's a reason my friends started calling me Frankensteinbeck.
I could talk about how great my writing is until I turn blue, but I should let an expert do that for me. Check out the Kirkus Review for Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Teeth!
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-rev...
As a writer my fascination has always been children's literature, especially children's lit that is also adult lit. For some reason, this means that instead I write gothic light romance for fun, and very dark and tragic young adult books for passion. I love seeing the world through the eyes of strange people, and I believe that happy endings must be earned the hard way. There's a reason my friends started calling me Frankensteinbeck.
I could talk about how great my writing is until I turn blue, but I should let an expert do that for me. Check out the Kirkus Review for Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Teeth!
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-rev...
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 3, 2021
Richard Roberts is back writing superheroes and now they're in high school! I was a bit disappointed that this wouldn't be a continuation of the adventures of the Inscrutable Machine but new character, Magenta, is a fantastic one. An alchemist who is cursed with the fact she can never be recognized by anyone (even her family), she hopes to become the next big superhero! It's just, well, she ends up a henchwoman instead to the mysterious Cleric.
There's just something aggressively adorable about Richard Roberts' writing style. Magenta comes to the school expecting it to be something like Professor Xavier's or the Avengers Academy but it's actually just a place with an inordinately high amount of superpowered kids. Her finding out that she's not going to be learning combat or how to use her powers better is such a cute and depressing (for her) moment.
I really liked this book and it is a return to a world that I'm familiar with and very much enjoy. Richard writes incredibly likable characters and this book is no exception. It also helps that it incorporates preexisting characters like Marcia and Charlotte. Magenta's alchemy is similar enough to Penny Ak's special abilities to be a good substitute but different enough to go in a different direction development wise.
This book is a must-buy for fans of the previous series and I can't wait for more adventures with our heroine. I also liked the twist at the end of the book. The Inscrutable Machine and Spider have given us the idea that supervillains in Los Angeles are effectively harmless but it turns out that this is a quirk of Los Angeles alone. No, there's some really terrible Deathstroke and Doctor Doom types out there. That adds a lot of tension. Is Cleric a good villain or a bad villain? Well, you'll just have to read to find out.
* Note: I got a free copy of this for an honest review.
Merged review:
Richard Roberts is back writing superheroes and now they're in high school! I was a bit disappointed that this wouldn't be a continuation of the adventures of the Inscrutable Machine but new character, Magenta, is a fantastic one. An alchemist who is cursed with the fact she can never be recognized by anyone (even her family), she hopes to become the next big superhero! It's just, well, she ends up a henchwoman instead to the mysterious Cleric.
There's just something aggressively adorable about Richard Roberts' writing style. Magenta comes to the school expecting it to be something like Professor Xavier's or the Avengers Academy but it's actually just a place with an inordinately high amount of superpowered kids. Her finding out that she's not going to be learning combat or how to use her powers better is such a cute and depressing (for her) moment.
I really liked this book and it is a return to a world that I'm familiar with and very much enjoy. Richard writes incredibly likable characters and this book is no exception. It also helps that it incorporates preexisting characters like Marcia and Charlotte. Magenta's alchemy is similar enough to Penny Ak's special abilities to be a good substitute but different enough to go in a different direction development wise.
This book is a must-buy for fans of the previous series and I can't wait for more adventures with our heroine. I also liked the twist at the end of the book. The Inscrutable Machine and Spider have given us the idea that supervillains in Los Angeles are effectively harmless but it turns out that this is a quirk of Los Angeles alone. No, there's some really terrible Deathstroke and Doctor Doom types out there. That adds a lot of tension. Is Cleric a good villain or a bad villain? Well, you'll just have to read to find out.
There's just something aggressively adorable about Richard Roberts' writing style. Magenta comes to the school expecting it to be something like Professor Xavier's or the Avengers Academy but it's actually just a place with an inordinately high amount of superpowered kids. Her finding out that she's not going to be learning combat or how to use her powers better is such a cute and depressing (for her) moment.
I really liked this book and it is a return to a world that I'm familiar with and very much enjoy. Richard writes incredibly likable characters and this book is no exception. It also helps that it incorporates preexisting characters like Marcia and Charlotte. Magenta's alchemy is similar enough to Penny Ak's special abilities to be a good substitute but different enough to go in a different direction development wise.
This book is a must-buy for fans of the previous series and I can't wait for more adventures with our heroine. I also liked the twist at the end of the book. The Inscrutable Machine and Spider have given us the idea that supervillains in Los Angeles are effectively harmless but it turns out that this is a quirk of Los Angeles alone. No, there's some really terrible Deathstroke and Doctor Doom types out there. That adds a lot of tension. Is Cleric a good villain or a bad villain? Well, you'll just have to read to find out.
* Note: I got a free copy of this for an honest review.
Merged review:
Richard Roberts is back writing superheroes and now they're in high school! I was a bit disappointed that this wouldn't be a continuation of the adventures of the Inscrutable Machine but new character, Magenta, is a fantastic one. An alchemist who is cursed with the fact she can never be recognized by anyone (even her family), she hopes to become the next big superhero! It's just, well, she ends up a henchwoman instead to the mysterious Cleric.
There's just something aggressively adorable about Richard Roberts' writing style. Magenta comes to the school expecting it to be something like Professor Xavier's or the Avengers Academy but it's actually just a place with an inordinately high amount of superpowered kids. Her finding out that she's not going to be learning combat or how to use her powers better is such a cute and depressing (for her) moment.
I really liked this book and it is a return to a world that I'm familiar with and very much enjoy. Richard writes incredibly likable characters and this book is no exception. It also helps that it incorporates preexisting characters like Marcia and Charlotte. Magenta's alchemy is similar enough to Penny Ak's special abilities to be a good substitute but different enough to go in a different direction development wise.
This book is a must-buy for fans of the previous series and I can't wait for more adventures with our heroine. I also liked the twist at the end of the book. The Inscrutable Machine and Spider have given us the idea that supervillains in Los Angeles are effectively harmless but it turns out that this is a quirk of Los Angeles alone. No, there's some really terrible Deathstroke and Doctor Doom types out there. That adds a lot of tension. Is Cleric a good villain or a bad villain? Well, you'll just have to read to find out.
May 26, 2021
This would be the sixth book in the Please Don't Tell My Parents series. It represents a return to the world of Bad Penny, but (curiously enough) not a return of Bad Penny herself. We catch a glimpse of Penny once, across a crowded cafeteria, and some of the supporting characters discuss her, but she herself does not make an appearance in this book.
This book is about a new character: Magenta.
Magenta represents many of the things I most enjoy in a protagonist: She's young, she has strong principles, she has some unusual advantages, and she has some substantial disadvantages. She is, in many ways, one of the weakest characters in the story. And that's what I like reading about. I don't want to read the story from Superman's perspective. I want to read Superman's story from Batman's perspective. Or perhaps, I want to read what Batman does in Superman's world. Watching someone struggle against the gods is always more interesting to me than what the gods themselves are doing.
I don't want to get too much more into the details, because I hate doing that. It's a good book about a young woman with interesting abilities, who gets placed into an interesting situation where she has to make some difficult choices. The story examines trust, responsibility, friendship, goals, and limitations, all against the backdrop of Roberts' stylized superhero world.
Magenta is in someways a very similar character to Penny, but is a fresh take on the world, without the accumulated baggage Penny has acquired. It's also not clear if this is a one-off story, or if Roberts means to tell more of Magenta's tale in the future. Based on the end of the story, it could go either way.
However, the almost complete absence of Penny from her own world does lead me to ponder whether or not Roberts is still thinking about her and has some future plans. If he had plans to never return, I think it might have been more likely that we would have seen Penny show up, at least briefly, as an actual character in the story. The fact that we don't see her at all leads me to suspect that he may be holding information on her in reserve for a future book. But that's Penny, and this book is about Magenta.
Anyway...
Highly recommended for fans of YA books, and Superheros.
First caveat: This book features many characters from the previous "Please Don't Tell My Parents" books (and side stories), familiarity with the universe is helpful, but not essential.
Second caveat: I think the book could have used a Dramatis Personae list. If there was one, I missed it.
As always: I paid retail price for the Kindle version of this book, my thoughts on it are my own. They were neither solicited by, nor compensated for, by the author or by the publisher.
This book is about a new character: Magenta.
Magenta represents many of the things I most enjoy in a protagonist: She's young, she has strong principles, she has some unusual advantages, and she has some substantial disadvantages. She is, in many ways, one of the weakest characters in the story. And that's what I like reading about. I don't want to read the story from Superman's perspective. I want to read Superman's story from Batman's perspective. Or perhaps, I want to read what Batman does in Superman's world. Watching someone struggle against the gods is always more interesting to me than what the gods themselves are doing.
I don't want to get too much more into the details, because I hate doing that. It's a good book about a young woman with interesting abilities, who gets placed into an interesting situation where she has to make some difficult choices. The story examines trust, responsibility, friendship, goals, and limitations, all against the backdrop of Roberts' stylized superhero world.
Magenta is in someways a very similar character to Penny, but is a fresh take on the world, without the accumulated baggage Penny has acquired. It's also not clear if this is a one-off story, or if Roberts means to tell more of Magenta's tale in the future. Based on the end of the story, it could go either way.
However, the almost complete absence of Penny from her own world does lead me to ponder whether or not Roberts is still thinking about her and has some future plans. If he had plans to never return, I think it might have been more likely that we would have seen Penny show up, at least briefly, as an actual character in the story. The fact that we don't see her at all leads me to suspect that he may be holding information on her in reserve for a future book. But that's Penny, and this book is about Magenta.
Anyway...
Highly recommended for fans of YA books, and Superheros.
First caveat: This book features many characters from the previous "Please Don't Tell My Parents" books (and side stories), familiarity with the universe is helpful, but not essential.
Second caveat: I think the book could have used a Dramatis Personae list. If there was one, I missed it.
As always: I paid retail price for the Kindle version of this book, my thoughts on it are my own. They were neither solicited by, nor compensated for, by the author or by the publisher.
September 30, 2022
There's a point in every series writers ongoing series when it's time to put the series to bed.
Unfortunately some writers fail to appreciate this & think they can keep the series going by ditching all the characters & replacing them with new characters.
Apparently Richard looked at those writers & said, "here, hold my beer"& the proceeded to not only replace all the interesting characters, but also go in a completely different & much less interesting direction, essentially jettisoning anything interesting that had been done before this in the series.
Unfortunately some writers fail to appreciate this & think they can keep the series going by ditching all the characters & replacing them with new characters.
Apparently Richard looked at those writers & said, "here, hold my beer"& the proceeded to not only replace all the interesting characters, but also go in a completely different & much less interesting direction, essentially jettisoning anything interesting that had been done before this in the series.
May 19, 2021
Just wonderful
It's no surprise that a book about bringing wonder and amazement to the ordinary brings both to the table. The story feels real and complete and as always the world is a breathing expansive narrative that the protagonist is the star of only because it is her story. The living world outside of Magenta's story is there in glimpses that tie this story in well with the don't tell my parents world. Even many of my favorite characters from the other books are here. Magentas powers are both cool and have major drawbacks. The feeling that no one will ever see who you are is definitely a major thing I thought on as a teenager although I wish I had had as easy of a time with my own classes. There is also a very with great power comes great responsibility but not everyone can live up to that stress without breaking b plot. It maybe is the point of the book. It is very touching and I'll probably end up thinking on with the obvious parallels to self care and mental health. Not everyone can live up to the standards imposed by society and that's okay. It's okay to take care of yourself. Clerik would be proud of the lesson and adventure given in this book.
It's no surprise that a book about bringing wonder and amazement to the ordinary brings both to the table. The story feels real and complete and as always the world is a breathing expansive narrative that the protagonist is the star of only because it is her story. The living world outside of Magenta's story is there in glimpses that tie this story in well with the don't tell my parents world. Even many of my favorite characters from the other books are here. Magentas powers are both cool and have major drawbacks. The feeling that no one will ever see who you are is definitely a major thing I thought on as a teenager although I wish I had had as easy of a time with my own classes. There is also a very with great power comes great responsibility but not everyone can live up to that stress without breaking b plot. It maybe is the point of the book. It is very touching and I'll probably end up thinking on with the obvious parallels to self care and mental health. Not everyone can live up to the standards imposed by society and that's okay. It's okay to take care of yourself. Clerik would be proud of the lesson and adventure given in this book.
May 12, 2021
A fitting continuation to the series
I highly enjoyed the previous "Don't Tell My Parents..." books, and I was looking forward to this one. It did not disappoint. I don't know if it's as good as the first one, but it's better than three second one. Some parts of the plot will seen tremendously familiar, a teenage girl with inventing powers getting one over on the adults while somehow easily hiding their identity. A lot of familiar faces show up, including Penny as a common background character. It's a bit different, with established policy for independent kids villains, but Magenta blazing the trail for kid minions.
As with some of the recent books, you get the feeling that Roberts had to cut a lot of material regarding the setting and background characters, with people being referenced in enough detail that seemingly they must be plot relevant, but never show up again. The concept of principaled villains who are still very much villains is nice, although the sudden bit inevitable betrayal feels very much not a surprise.
I highly enjoyed the previous "Don't Tell My Parents..." books, and I was looking forward to this one. It did not disappoint. I don't know if it's as good as the first one, but it's better than three second one. Some parts of the plot will seen tremendously familiar, a teenage girl with inventing powers getting one over on the adults while somehow easily hiding their identity. A lot of familiar faces show up, including Penny as a common background character. It's a bit different, with established policy for independent kids villains, but Magenta blazing the trail for kid minions.
As with some of the recent books, you get the feeling that Roberts had to cut a lot of material regarding the setting and background characters, with people being referenced in enough detail that seemingly they must be plot relevant, but never show up again. The concept of principaled villains who are still very much villains is nice, although the sudden bit inevitable betrayal feels very much not a surprise.
February 8, 2025
To be honest, most series that have a set of main characters don't do well when they delve into other characters. That is absolutely not the case this time. As great as Penny was, her story felt like it has already passed its climax. She peaked already.
This story also feels slightly more adult in comparison, as Magenta actually seems to think through problems and repercussions in a way that normal people might in her situation. That was something I felt lacking in Penny's overall character. She was very reactive, only really feeling guilt after her power went awry in some way...like a younger child might, not a teenager. Magenta is very relatable in that she is overlooked constantly. She feels like the way most of us would probably behave with superpowers. In for our fifteen minutes of fame, and then realize the super life is crazy.
This story also feels slightly more adult in comparison, as Magenta actually seems to think through problems and repercussions in a way that normal people might in her situation. That was something I felt lacking in Penny's overall character. She was very reactive, only really feeling guilt after her power went awry in some way...like a younger child might, not a teenager. Magenta is very relatable in that she is overlooked constantly. She feels like the way most of us would probably behave with superpowers. In for our fifteen minutes of fame, and then realize the super life is crazy.
Read
May 17, 2021Quite humorous and a good read
I feel the author is only one of the more modern few who engage in storytelling rather than selling sex and snarkiness. I'm a long fan of his Armored Heroine and found this extension of that storied world to be entertaining as well. Bravo! And Thank You.
I feel the author is only one of the more modern few who engage in storytelling rather than selling sex and snarkiness. I'm a long fan of his Armored Heroine and found this extension of that storied world to be entertaining as well. Bravo! And Thank You.
May 6, 2021
The best one yet.
The world isn't always pretty, or nice, but anything is possible. I love the world Richard Roberts has created, and this was the best story from it yet. I hope that one day he will give us a story with a male main character.
The world isn't always pretty, or nice, but anything is possible. I love the world Richard Roberts has created, and this was the best story from it yet. I hope that one day he will give us a story with a male main character.
May 6, 2021
Yes yes yes on no
Oh I missed this author's work and did not expect to be traveling back to this world. Very happy day. What a great surprise!!! Read the books this may be the best installment.
Oh I missed this author's work and did not expect to be traveling back to this world. Very happy day. What a great surprise!!! Read the books this may be the best installment.
June 6, 2021
A very entertaining read
Returning to the world of Penny and her friends to follow the adventures of new characters was very entertaining. I quickly got over the disappointment that Penny and friends weren't featured. I loved these new characters just as much.
Returning to the world of Penny and her friends to follow the adventures of new characters was very entertaining. I quickly got over the disappointment that Penny and friends weren't featured. I loved these new characters just as much.
April 6, 2021
obviously havent read it yet but im confident in roberts prowess as a author.
May 11, 2021
A very nice continuing of the world
While not featuring Penny this book does a great job of continuing the world and is just as great of a read.
While not featuring Penny this book does a great job of continuing the world and is just as great of a read.
May 24, 2021
Good but not as good as the regular series
I absolutely loved the regular "Please Don't Tell My Parents" series so any additional entry in the world is good, but I think I would have much rather preferred another story with the regular main characters to this.
Let me explain, I wouldn't have minded a story with another character set in the same world but Magenta is very similar to Penny. A young female protagonist with science related powers (Alchemy this time instead of super science) is trying to find her way in the superhero/supervillian world. She goes to the same school and even falls in with the same group of friends (Yet not any of the previous main characters because that of course would detract from this story).
I'm still invested in the world and want to keep reading books set there but I would prefer more unique characters. Or even if we go back to Penny we could see how that whole group transitions into adulthood and gets new challenges.
I absolutely loved the regular "Please Don't Tell My Parents" series so any additional entry in the world is good, but I think I would have much rather preferred another story with the regular main characters to this.
Let me explain, I wouldn't have minded a story with another character set in the same world but Magenta is very similar to Penny. A young female protagonist with science related powers (Alchemy this time instead of super science) is trying to find her way in the superhero/supervillian world. She goes to the same school and even falls in with the same group of friends (Yet not any of the previous main characters because that of course would detract from this story).
I'm still invested in the world and want to keep reading books set there but I would prefer more unique characters. Or even if we go back to Penny we could see how that whole group transitions into adulthood and gets new challenges.
February 1, 2025
I had an itch for superheroes and Roberts once again scratched that itch. The first Penny books were more exciting, but this once was still entertaining and fun.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews