BREAK

A young man gains superpowers and becomes a costumed crime fighter in this debut novel.

Nick Spears lives in Jersey City. He works in a hardware store and keeps an apartment in his mother’s attic. He also fights crime at night as Spear, a costumed martial artist with enhanced strength. His power came after he survived three near-death experiences and his adrenaline levels broke “past the boundaries of normal human beings.” One night, Nick’s friend Von is shot by gang members. Von survives and describes a gang leader with a tattoo of a “scorpion with a cobra head on its tail.” This is Razor, who runs the D Venoms gang. Spear, who can become “diesel” strong for 15-minute stretches and wields a special staff, goes after Razor and learns about an even worse criminal named Mr. P. Soon. Spear gains a reputation for cleaning up the streets. Unhinged individuals with superpowers start challenging him, including the superstrong Crank, the electrically charged Juice, and the superintelligent Shrink. When Nick dreams of the father he’s never met, his mother, Audrey, says the man’s name is John. Von helps Nick find a geneticist online named John Pierson, who lives in Connecticut. Could this man be responsible for Nick’s extraordinary abilities? Grant’s adventure is a thematic blend of comic books like Marvel’s Daredevil and video games such as “Street Fighter.” The action is frequent and flamboyant, as when Spear’s and Crank’s fists “clashed midair and created a small shockwave. They pushed off each other’s fist and backflipped away from each other.” Some of the villains have sympathetic origins, including Juice, who, as Joshua Johnson, is bullied by his mother, and M Wave, who, as Larry Swanson, is disparagingly called “queer” by high school classmates. But the author’s erratic prose hinders the narrative flow. Players often speak in rapid succession within the same long paragraph; infodumps stand in for character development; and passages sometimes switch tenses, as in “The man nodded yes, then gets walked off. The leader sits down and rest his feet on the desk.” Nicely detailed, uncredited illustrations of the characters begin each chapter.

An intriguing, energetic, but unpolished superhero tale.