I thought the first book in this series was terrific–there were shades of of Spider-Man (more than other superheroes, I guess because Jonathan Tibbs was such a nerd originally), and Superman in the sense that Tibbs fights intergalactic challengers (the Ferox), but whenever Tibbs encounters a ferox and kills him, he does so in “the Never,” a parallel timeline that subsequently ceases to be. As a result, nobody in our world besides Tibbs himself, or any other challengers like him, have any memory that the confrontation occurred. It’s the perfect way that he can never truly reveal his secret identity to anyone else in a lasting way.
The other twist is that Tibbs himself isn’t actually special. Two aliens from an extinct race are actually in charge–one (Hale) chose Tibbs as a challenger and “upgraded” him so that he could fight the Ferox when they come through the dimensional porthole, but he’s chosen many others besides Tibbs too over the years, and even simultaneously. The other alien is Hale’s brother, while Hale took the body of a deceased human, the brother took the body of a Ferox.
All of this was established in the first book. The second introduces Riley, another human “challenger” from Brazil who comes to join Tibbs and fight by his side. In book one, next door neighbor Leah was Tibbs’s love interest, but Riley makes a triangle. Also, Leah happens to be working with the government, tracking those humans who’ve had contact with Hale–which Tibbs doesn’t know.
But so many great premises seem to lose steam with book 2. This one seemed to lag for me. The pacing was off, somehow, and I kinda of lost interest with the Riley story, which dominated this book. I finished it, and started book 3, but at that point somehow the action became chaotic, or maybe arbitrary. The story followed the Hero’s Journey with a twist early on, but then diverged into something else that didn’t feel “right” somehow. I’m not sure how else to describe it. Anyhow, I didn’t continue with book 3.
My rating: ****
Language: moderate
Violence: present, but didn’t feel gratuitous to me
Sexual content: present but I think it was a fade-to-black kind of thing
Political content: none that I can recall
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