Mutant U: An Average Jax

by Maximum Morowsky, AJ Mercurio (Editor), Zilong Zhuo (Editor)

Four years ago, Jackson Allen’s life got turned upside down. Now, to even have a fighting chance at a future, he has to graduate from Excalibur University, one of the two colleges in the nation that accepts mutants. To make matters worse, Jackson doesn’t have any mutant powers, making him the neon-green sheep among a flock of society’s black sheep. Follow Jackson’s journey as he struggles with his mental health, fitting in, and solving New Landing’s latest mystery.

777 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 29, 2022

About the author

Maximum Morowsky is a young engineer out of Delaware who had dreamt of one day writing a book. Unfortunately, his uphill battle with dyslexia would prevent him from achieving that dream for a long time. After graduating college, he came to realize that if he kept shelfing his dream due to a learning disorder he would never make it come true. With supportive friends at his back and a keyboard to his front, he finally put his ideas to paper.

Reviews

[Deb Andrade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full Disclosure: the author of Mutant U: An Average Jax is my nephew. How could I not love this book!

Jackson Allen is a young university student caught between two worlds: the first class world of Humans and the third class world of Mutants. Although poor Jax comes from Human lineage, he unfortunately tests positive for the Mutant gene but has no redeeming Mutant super power...the worst of all possibilities. He finds himself attending Excalibur University - only one of two US schools designated for Mutants. His dilemma? He is a Human with the Mutant gene and a Mutant without a super power. It is only through his good nature, creative innovative thinking, and impressive resilience that he not only survives his first semester at University, he ends up saving the day...and a lot of butts along the way.

Told in the first person, and peppered with humorous and insightful asides, this book puts you deep inside the mind of a young adult struggling to find his identity and gain social acceptance. It perfectly captures how self doubt can be channeled into self improvement. One might even guess that the author is also an engineer: the location and action descriptions are precise and detailed...the Mutant characters are well developed in terms of demeanour, appearance and abilities.

The plot starts slowly then rapidly builds in pace with a few satisfying twists to keep you guessing. As the story progresses, Average Jax hits his stride with methodical step by step "Plans" and an array of highly effective "Gadgets" that are sequentially numbered. (Plastic zip ties is Gadget number thirteen.) Plus the text is full of clever similes like "typing with two fingers as if he was poking at a dead animal on the side of the road" and "causing the top half of the structure to bend over like a traffic cone collapsing under the weight of a moving car."

Highly enjoyable debut effort. Looking forward to the sequel Max!

[Violetinkpen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up at a local comicon and was really excited to read it. I read a lot of different genres, but there’s not many books that feel like a comic book, so the idea of a novel about mutants was really exciting, and I couldn’t wait to dig in. Having just finished it I can attest the fact that it definitely feels like a comic book, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Average Jax, and the Adjective Boys.

The plot of the book was somewhat cliché. You have the oppressed mutants, living in a society that deems them as less than human and treats them like trash, you have the mutant who somehow doesn’t have any powers and who is an outcast in both societies, you have the popular, powerful mutant with the love, interest on his right arm, you have the secret bad guy, and you have the nerdy friend group who somehow turns to crime fighting. Despite the predictable plot twists, and the somewhat juvenile dialogue at times, I did actually enjoyed reading this.

It did take a bit of time to actually build up and get momentum. The action was few and far between, and for such a long book there wasn’t much character development throughout. The mutations described in the book were quite unique and creative, but the characters portrayed in the book are somewhat two-dimensional. Ben was never anything other than afraid, Marion was just the jokester, and Steven was the vanilla “best friend” whose reason for wearing a mask was honestly disappointing and cringe.


I do appreciate how Jax was able to use his intelligence and problem-solving abilities to stand up to people who were just naturally born with powers. I do love the fact that he didn’t give up, but found a way to overcome his lack of abilities in a world, where many of the people around him could easily kill him with a flick of their rest. What I do find kind of cheap, however, is that he is able to use wealth to replace mutant powers.

Now don’t get me wrong, Jax’s life definitely sucks, but, like in most similar stories, most of his problems are easily wiped away, by the fact that he is rich. Honestly, who needs superpowers when you can just pay to have all your problems disappear? This would be a completely different book if Jax was actually as poor as he originally pretends to be, if he couldn’t pay for college, or for all of his fancy gadgets, or for some of the other privileges that he had then he would’ve never been a hero in the first place. Yes, he still had to use his intelligence to design the gadgets and to know how to best to use them, but that opportunity would not have been available to him if he wasn’t rich. So honestly, if you’re trying to send a message that even average people can stand up against the powers it really doesn’t work because you’re not average when you’re a billionaire.

There are too many similar books with a poor downcast protagonist is actually secretly rich, and is able to pretty much make everything better with a wave of their credit card. I kind of wish that he had found a way to conquer all his obstacles without having secret stashes of money buried in the ground. Kudos to the author, however, for not making Jack’s actually have an undiscovered power that he learns about along the way, because that’s another cliché in these types of stories that I’m glad we avoided. I thought at one point that we were hinting at that when Jax’s observed that random mutants were helping him for no apparent reason. I thought maybe he had some sort of ability to influence them, but that was never further addressed so I’m wondering why it was even mentioned if we weren’t building up to something?

Also, the way the book ended was no surprise. The big reveal who the villain was, the way things ended with the love interest, as well as the revelation made on the very last page. Everything was perfectly predictable and set up from the beginning and although it wasn’t bad, it also wasn’t Fresh or different. Exactly what you would expect from this type of the story.

Overall, it was a fun read, and definitely gave off X-Men vibes. As someone who grew up with the old X-Men cartoon, and just with the Marvel world in general, I was really excited to read a book that felt similar to that type of story and genre. I was hoping that it would be a bit edger since it wasn’t designed for children the same way that Marvel is, but plot wise it was not exactly a risk taking type of book.

Quite honestly, if there was a sequel to the story, I don’t know that I would seek it out. While I did like the book there was nothing shocking, amazing, or different enough about it to leave me wanting more. If you want a lighthearted story about people with superpowers it’s definitely a good read, but if you’re hoping for a bit more plot and satisfyingly emotional moments with characters, you can connect with deeply then this is probably not the book for you.

With that being said, congratulations to Maximum for fulfilling your dream and getting published. Many people want to do that, but you actually accomplished it so great job!