I have read the first book, and I thought I’d share my personal thoughts about it.
I have to say, the book wasn’t quite what I expected it to be. I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. I’m not sure if you’ve read it, but one of my favorite books is the young adult book Hero by Perry Moore. For some reason, I sort of had it in my head this would be an adult version of that, with kink and maybe a bit of the 60s Batman series thrown in. Turns out, it’s quite a bit more kinky and solemn than I expected. Not that this is a bad thing, just different than what I expected.
The plot, in broad terms so I can try to remain spoiler free, concerns a nurse named Roland. He gets mugged early on, but shortly thereafter meets Rick, who confesses he has a superhero fetish. This taps into some perhaps unrealized feelings within Roland, and their during their subsequent meets, he gets pushed in ways he had never imagined (most of which are pretty kinky). Simultaneously, he finds his own body changing. With guidance from a book he discovers from friends, we suspect he may be a character in a much larger story than he could possibly imagine.
There’s definitely a bias to buff, muscular and bearish guys. I’m more of a twink guy, but that’s more a reflection of my own personal preference, admittedly. Some of the pacing of the book was awkward to me, but realizing now that it’s a part of a larger series helps that (I didn’t know that until recently; when I read it, I thought it was a self-contained novel). The biggest flaw I personally had was that I had a hard time believing Roland wouldn’t be more concerned or curious about what was happening to him… he seemed to take a very passive role to his own fate, and as a nurse character, I found it a bit hard to believe he wouldn’t physically research and investigate his own body changes more, or show more concern about them.
On the plus side, I am intrigued to see where this is going. For much of the novel, aside from Rick and his friends that give him the book, Roland don’t get to interact with many other people. There are some pretty horrific bits of gore in there, but as a horror movie buff, that didn’t bother me much. And, um, the kink stuff is pretty damn hot. Needless to say, a chapter called Enslavement is my favorite part of the book. 😀 It’s also quite fascinating to have our potential future hero be mostly such a submissive. Philosophically, that creates a lot of interesting contrast.
And for the record, there are a number of unsafe practices in the book. But as Greene noted in an interview he did on the No Safe Word podcast, the book is a work of fiction, not an actual instructional manual. I think that’s an excellent point.
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