In this excellent follow up to the The Rules of Supervillainy, Gary Karkofsky (AKA Merciless: The Villain Without Mercy) has returned from the Moon prison to find Falconcrest City over run with zombies. Yep. Freaking zombies. Add to that, it appears his wife was kidnapped. Merciless and his henchpeople set out to stop the Brotherhood of Infamy, rid Falconcrest of zombies, and rescue his wife. Nothing goes as planned.
Once again, there’s a ton of humor in this book. The characters all take their jobs very seriously and that makes the humor stand out. Most of them have ridiculous supervillain/hero names but some of them have cool powers. So it’s this wonderful balance of the silly and the serious.
It’s a good thing that Gary has his sidekick, Cloak, which is his actual cloak. Gary needs all the advice he can process and Cloak is definitely willing to dish it out. Cloak used to be a superhero and one could argue Cloak is still trying to be that hero even though he is tied to Merciless at the moment. This creates some tension for Gary, who is relying on Cloak’s powers part of the time, yet Gary (especially when he’s dressed as Merciless) isn’t nearly as goodie-two-shoes as Cloak.
Some new characters are introduced into the story (and some are killed shortly thereafter, but every good superhero story needs it’s Red Shirts). I loved all the Canadian superheros. A fit of giggles overtook me on that one. I’m married to a Canadian so that whole section struck me as super funny. Then we have the supervillain Angel Eyes. His sheer beauty can overwhelm most mortals. Much to Gary’s consternation (and my amusement), he finds Angel Eyes attractive.
Besides all the humor, there’s little bits of seriousness tossed in. Gary and Mandy have hit a rough patch in their relationship. There’s all these zombies tearing up their beloved city. Then the author kicks it up a notch and Gary and crew have to deal with gods from the underworld. Without spoiling anything, there were some unexpected twists to the story. I was stunned and also impressed. I’m so very glad the next book is already out in audio format so I can jump in and see what happens to these characters next!
I received a free copy of this book.
The Narration: Jeffrey Kafer continues to do an excellent job with this series. I’m really enjoying his voice for Cloak this time around. His Canadian accents were great. His voices for female characters are good.