The Accidental Hero by Matt Myklusch

(Cover picture courtesy of Munro’s Books.)

All Jack Blank knows is his bleak, dreary life at St. Barnaby’s Home for the Hopeless, Abandoned, Forgotten, and Lost, an orphanage that sinks more and more into the swampland of New Jersey with each passing year. His aptitude tests project him as spending a long, unhappy career as a toilet brush cleaner. His only chance at escape comes through the comic books donated years ago to the orphanage that he secretly reads in the dark corners of the library.

Everything changes one icy gray morning when Jack receives two visitors that alter his life forever. The first is a deadly robot straight out of one of his comic books that tries its best to blow him up. The second is an emissary from a secret country called the Imagine Nation, an astonishing place where all the fantastic and unbelievable things in our world originate – including Jack. Jack soon discovers that he has an amazing ability–one that could make him the savior of the Imagine Nation and the world beyond, or the biggest threat they’ve ever faced.

I had my doubts about this book when my friend lent it to me.  The way she described it…well it made me less than enthusiastic, I have to admit.  Yet I decided to give The Accidental Hero (first published under the title Jack Blank and the Imagine Nation) a chance.  After all, I had been skeptical when the same friend lent me Cinder and it turned out to be amazing.

Matt Myklusch’s novel pokes tongue-in-cheek fun at old superhero tropes while at the same time putting a new spin on them so that young boys (and girls too!) will love it.  I’ve only read one comic book in my entire life, but as with most people, I’m familiar with superheroes.  I’m a closet fan of the new Batman movies, used to watch the Spiderman cartoons and actually didn’t mind Thor.  The Accidental Hero focuses on the adventures of an orphan, Jack Blank, who accidentally discovers his superpowers and is taken away to the Imagine Nation, a constantly moving island of superheroes.  Yet from the moment he arrives, things start to go wrong.

I considered Jack a cardboard cutout for the first third of the book, but then I realized the author was poking a bit of fun at old superhero clichés while slowly building a three dimensional character with a great character arc.  Jack is a character readers of all ages will love, especially boys, who seem to be woefully neglected in the YA genre.

With a fast-paced plot and amazing world-building, this is the kind of new spin on old clichés I love.  Personally, I’m glad I read it and look forward to reading about Jack’s future adventures.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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My Classic Collection

This isn’t the best of all pictures, I know.  However, it does reveal my pitiful classic collection.  So far I’m reading Dante’s Divine Comedy aloud to my little sister, I finished The Prince and I’m working on Paradise Lost.  Next on my list to tackle is Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and then Homer’s Iliad.

This is my personal collection and is rather misleading seeing as we have a lot of classic books in the family collection.  I haven’t really read many of them, mostly because the bulk of the reading I do now is YA for my blog, but I have been slowly working my way through all the classics everyone says you have to read.

I’m rather enjoying reading Dante aloud because right now we’re on the first book in The Divine Comedy, The Inferno, which is obviously the most famous one.  When read aloud, it is quite powerful poetry with a lot of heavy imagery.  The only problem is trying to explain to my little sister what the carnal sinners did… Continue reading →

Experimentation

Well, you guys wanted a contact page, but to do that I would either end up with two layers of tabs  (which would be hideous) or end up merging two existing pages.  I suppose I could do the latter, but I have found an excellent theme that has a larger navigation bar.  It’s called ‘Coraline’ and is surprisingly similar to Pilcrow in that it’s a ‘clean’ theme.  Personally, I like it.  But what do you guys think of the new theme?  Tell me in the comments below!

And if you still have suggestions for further improvement, drop me a line using the new contact page or the comments.

Since I’m Guest Posting Today…

I would like to run a survey.  Yes, another survey.  I like feedback from you, my readers, because you’re the reason I’m still blogging.  If you’re curious about my guest post, you can find it by clicking this link.  It’s for Eona by Alison Goodman, which is an excellent book even if you don’t generally read fantasy.

Back to my survey.  I’ve asked you guys about what kind of content you like here on The Mad Reviewer, but I haven’t asked what you’ve thought of the blog itself.  So, what do you think?

Should Reviewers Give Bad Reviews?

To my surprise, I discovered a debate about the ethics of bad reviews.  It involved much blustering, ad hominem attacks and ridiculously obscure literary references, so here are the simplified arguments:

For: People have the right to voice their opinions.

Against: Reviewers should keep bad reviews to themselves because they hurt authors, especially new authors.

Now, the argument I came across mostly applied to national newspaper reviewers giving bad reviews to new poetry, but sort of degenerated to encompass all bad reviews by anyone, including bloggers.  That’s why I’ve chosen to write my own opinion on the topic, not only to get rid of the ridiculous rhetoric, but bring a little sanity to the debate.  Here we go…

First off, attempting to censor the internet is like trying to forbid a teenager from seeing their girlfriend/boyfriend—it only heightens the appeal.  Secondly, we need to talk semantics.  ‘Bad review’ is generally a misnomer because in nine out of ten reviews with that label, the reviewer has found at least one good thing to say about the book.  ‘Bad review’ usually implies that the reviewer simply hated it and wants to completely trash the book and the author, which is far from the truth.  A review with honest, thoughtful criticism is better than a review where the reviewer praises the book to the heavens while lying through their teeth.

And let’s not kid ourselves here.  Would you trust a reviewer that only gave 4 and 5 star reviews?  To me, that says they’re either lying or they love every book they read, even the ones that are truly bad.

I’m not going to apologize for giving 1 and 2 star reviews.  I’m not even going to apologize for the 0.5 star review I gave once.  Why?  Because I wrote my honest feelings about those books and I like to think I had genuinely constructive criticism.  If I didn’t publish reviews on books I didn’t like, not only would I have less content, I’d be selling myself.  When I started my blog, I promised to tell only the truth about books and I have.  I am not about to censor myself because one bad review might prejudice my admittedly small following against an author.  And frankly, I don’t think many other bloggers would.

I don’t see many issues in black and white, but this is one of the rare cases where I do.  You’re either completely for free speech or against it.  You either want bloggers to put their honest opinions out there, or you want to silence them—well, parts of them.  Again, let’s be honest with ourselves: Are our egos so inflated that we actually think one bad review by a blogger will ruin a new writer’s chance at gaining a following?

Of course not.  One bad review is not going to hurt authors.  In fact, sometimes I read reviews where the reviewer hated the book and went on to buy it because the premise actually sounded good to me.  I know a lot of people who are the same.  Yes, a lot of bad reviews will harm a new book, but in that case I have something thoroughly cold-hearted to say.  If your book is getting a large amount of bad reviews (70% or more), it was probably meant to fail.

So what do you guys think?  Should book reviewers keep it to themselves if they didn’t like a book?