Reality Bypass

Book Review: Black and White September 16, 2009

It’s a bird…it’s a plane…it’s…neither of the above, but it is a tremendous story about superheroes and where lies the line between hero and villan.

Black and White is a joint project by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge which follows the lives of two superpowered women in a world where heroes are born every day and the Corp uses them to keep the world safer for all the normal humans like you and me.  The problem is that all is not happy in the world of the Corp and there are good reasons for it too.

This book took on a huge challenge in how it tells this story.  We’re moved back and forth between the heads of the two protagonists and back and forth through time to see what is happening in the current day and then given the background of the characters in snippets which show their years together in school.  Each section is clearly labeled with JET or IRIDIUM and a THEN or NOW to help the reader keep track.  Honestly when I picked up the book I was highly concerned by this set up and fairly sure it would be annoying.  Thankfully it’s not annoying and, in fact, works brilliantly.  I think a good part of this success is because both authors know both characters so well that even when the view point switches both characters remain perfectly true to themselves.  So instead of being jerked back and forth between two very different stories, it’s a beautiful lay out of one situation through two pairs of eyes.

I very much liked the characters involved and believed their motivations and the character quirks that were both their strengths and weaknesses.  I liked seeing the play on the normal superhero tropes by making Jet the shadow user the hero type and Iriduim the light user the ‘rabid’.   Their interactions as friends and later as enemies who remember being friends and still yearn for that closeness is powerful stuff.  The plot going on around them makes sense and while I figured out a few things early, it was only by a page or two.  This lead to me doing a happy dance when my suspicions were confirmed and my husband giving me a long suffering look before going back to his Terry Prachette.

The story was satisfying but definitely a lead into the next book Shades of Grey, which I’ll be happy to snatch up.  Now I’m going to go make enchiladas…I’m hungry.

Genre:  SuperHero

Age:  14 +

Content: violence, mild sexuality.

Overall:  Buy