so i got around to reading the sample of the man of steel novelization that i downloaded on my kindle, and i start this with a few claps for greg cox? i gotta say, dude totally stepped his game for this one! he makes a lot of the same mistakes as before, but those mistakes are better written and more engaging, so that counts for something! i actually, like, want to read this thing. wait, was that supposed to come at the end? oh well.
anyway, ONWARDS!
i remind you again that i haven't seen the movie for this, so i'm judging the book strictly as a book. that being said, was the destruction of krypton a prologue in the movie? because it feels like it should have been. one thing i do know is that superman's back story isn't told chronologically, and i already typed out this protip yesterday, but this scene taking place thirty-three years before the events of the movie that isn't a flashback should be a prologue!! if this isn't a prologue in the movie either, than boo on you chris nolan and david goyer! get it together!
okay, so, to the actual story. the book jumps right into the action with the birth of superbaby. the first line of the book is jor-el telling his wife lara to push. i actually like this, because at least now i know that mr. cox doesn't start all his books the same way. very good. points of for using the word cranium again, though. what's up with that??
it's worth noting that the design aesthetic of krypton is very basic sci-fi stuff. it's the same mix of organic and futuristic as, like, the chitauri in the avengers and the predator planet in predators. that's not the fault of the author, i think, but i haven't read the script so i don't know.
now onto the thing that bothered me the most in this chapter. i've noticed a trend in male writers to mention how attractive the attractive female character is too much. Lara Lor-Van is called beautiful at every turn, with every synonym. it's not just this guy either: joss whedon does it in the script for the avengers, and the guys who wrote pirates of the caribbean do it any time elizabeth has a costume change. what gives, guys? i know lara is beautiful, you told me once already, you don't have to tell me every single time. also, stop describing all attractive women like they're angels! you don't need to mention how 'exquisite' her features are. there isn't this much energy spent on telling us that jor-el is attractive; hell, as far as i know he's plain as hell! all we know about him is that he's fit and has a beard. this is similar to the problem of only mentioning a char's skin tone if they're a person of color, and just like how that's racist, this is sexist. say it once, don't wear it out.*
so, anyway, lara gives birth to little supe, the first baby born on krypton in a long time, because of course he is. i got nothing wrong with superman being special, that's why he's superman and not batman, but god dammit can't he just be the last surviving member of the race? he has to be the first baby born in a really long time too? if they keep this up he'll start bordering on renesmee-levels of ~specialness~, and that's not good at all.
a weird thing happens here, where the author puts a
***
and then the scene changes slightly. see how weird that feels? three asterisks it the writing equivalent of a dissolve: it's meant to show the passing of a significant amount of time. i would be okay with it**, but this is not that long after the first part of the scene. she didn't even leave the room, she just moved to the couch. what gives?
there are things i do like in this part, though. i like that the author eludes to the house of el's sigil and tells you what it means without telling you it's an S. i like that superbaby's space ship is mentioned without telling you what it's for. it's nice to know that he trust us to put two and two together that way.
a this point jor-el has to leave and go yell at the council members because everything on krypton is ruined and he's trying to pitch a back up plan before it all goes to shit. he's sad because he has to leave his son and wife so soon (more proof that the *** was unnecessary), but he has to because,as i mentioned, if he doesn't everything will go to shit.
another *** happens and then we're at the council chamber. there's a short description of what krypton looks like on the outside, and you really do see why he's so desperate to get them to listen to him: the surface of the planet is completely uninhabited because everyone lives underground, where they can mooch off of the planet's core for warmth because their sun is shitty and red. in turn, mooching off the core is what's ruining them, so the situation is pretty dire. they've got a few weeks before shit goes down, but the stodgy old council is all 'we've submitted the plan for peer review', like they've got time for that shit. is it just me, or is there any story where the council isn't stodgy and old? mass effect is the only one i can think of.
just as jor-el is explaining to the council how they can use the outer space resources to help themselves out, general zod comes crashing in with his folks to stop him from being so damn genre savvy. we're introduced to his team as well, and, once again, we come crashing head first into some sexism.
remember how i made a whole post about how the good/bad dichotomy in the tdkr trilogy and inception was false? yeah, well gary cox busted in and made sure it existed in this story. faora-ul is directly compared to lara. how bullshit is that? why do we have to bring her into this? also why does faora have to be a femme fetale? why can't she be a burly soldier boy type? i'd vouch for a tiny feminine thing but people with that type of body don't usually exist in military settings, regardless of gender. also, speaking of that, why does krypton have the same gender roles as we do? aren't they supposed to be super advanced aliens? gender shouldn't even exist on that planet anymore.
zod pulls a cutler beckett on these guys and says that the council is dismissed, and they're all fired. he kills the head one for daring to ask who's authority he had, and the rest of the old coots are tied up and taken away. jor-el steps in, and the story reminds us for the third or fourth time that he and zod used to be bros. zod is the grindelwald to jor-el's dumbledore; i'm not even kidding, their friendship has the same origin, minus the unrequited gay love (or does it???). jor-el tells him he's going about it all wrong, zod says he's tired of all this shit, jor-el silently agrees, but then comes the kicker: zod asks jor-el to join him. this would be pretty basic, but it's kind of heartfelt? and by that i mean that zod's not asking for his help simply to get himself ahead. he wants to save the planet as badly as jor-el, but he's racist, and jor-el wants nothing to do with his third reich eugenics bullshit, so he declines. good move, dude. however, zod gets offended, because he didn't get the memo that they didn't like each other anymore, and has him taken away.
and that's it!
so, for this book, the verdict is that this is also okay, but i want to read more of it and see what happens, because the sample cut off during chapter two. the good thing is, i can buy this now! and i wanna do chapter by chapter reviews! yay! so i guess this will be a thing now. yay!
* the only real exception to this is if it's written from the pov of someone who's really in love, in first person or third person limited, and even then just find a strong synonym and use it once
** on a personal note, i'm not a fan of *** in general, though i have seen it used okay. i feel like it promotes the disuse of transitions, which are really easy to use anyway.
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