Gods of Justice Review: Identity Crises

I won Gods of Justice from Lisa Gail Green. It's an anthology of superhero short stories. Lisa asked if I would write a review of the anthology, but since I like to give more than asked, I decided to do a review of each story, one at a time. In case you didn't know, I really like superheroes, so this was a great prize for me. I'll be reviewing them one story at a time in this "Gods of Justice Review series."

***Warning: Spoilers on this one***

Identity Crises by Lisa Gail Green is the story of identical twin sisters who have more in common than either of them realize. One sister is the classically perfect kid: the best grades (Easily), the social butterfly, the shining extra curriculars, the boyfriends, and, to top it all off, super powers. The other, less fortunate sister, struggles to pass, never gets the guy she likes, feels awkward, and buries herself in video games and books at home.

As the story goes (that sounds so legendary), Leslie, the less-than-perfect, follows Miranda "Mir," the more-than-you-could-ask-for, into the bad side of town at night to catch her doing something she shouldn't. I like names to mean something, without being Pilgrim's Progress level of allegorical. Green uses extremely subtle names for the twins that are not at first obvious. Leslie = less while Miranda, Mir = more. Very clever, though what mean parents they must have!

Naturally, Less catches More changing into her superhero costume in a back alley. Then she, in turn, gets caught in the back alley by More's boyfriend (who Less loved first, of course). The boyfriend and Less leave the safety of the alley to watch the battle between SuperMore and the Big Bad Ugly guy, who is a tech villain. In the course of the battle, Mayhem, the villain, attacks an "innocent bystander" (naturally, he picks Less) and the boyfriend jumps in the way to save her. The boyfriend gets frozen, SuperMore takes a serious hit/injury, and Less shows that she's braver and smarter than she thinks she is. Mayhem takes off with his new popsicle as hostage/collateral, and throws back a meeting time and place.

Less helps More back home, and More insists that Less must take her place and go rescue the boyfriend, as More is temporarily confined to bed until she heals. Less practices all day with the magical stone in the belt (source of powers) and argues with herself about whether or not she can pull this off,and be the hero.

I'm going to leave you in the dark about what happens to the boyfriend and the villain, but she does make a pretty good showing of herself as a hero, and the twins decide to both be SuperMore, as the better sister confesses that she always thought the other one was better, due to her "street smarts" and quick thinking.

Now that you have the summarized storyline, on to my review. In short, the plot/action of this story was very well done. The villain acted reasonably, while still being classically villainous. In fact, there's one part, toward the end, where the villain is talking too much (they do that), and starts whining about how the hero's not acting the way she is supposed to. He studied videos of her moves and style and spent hours fire-proofing his suit. Shut up and take it, whiney-butt, she's taking you down. I loved that moment.

Some of the best foreshadowing in the action was during that initial scene where Less is watching SuperMore's battle. Despite her self-deprecating, she thinks fast when she gets involved, and sees errors the sister is making, tricks the villain is laying, before anyone else does. It's a good setup for her being successful later, and painted well. It makes me "buy-in" to the sister being good at it later, while defusing the bomb of the "instantly amazing superhero" that this could have been. A cape and a mask do not make you invincible. (They just make you look really cool!)

However, reviews, like coins, have two sides. What I didn't like about the story, was in the characterization. Not that the characters aren't good ones. I like the idea of Less-More twins, but the nature of the writing made the characters difficult to bring out. Let me explain. The problem with Flash Fiction (very short stories) is that there is very little in the way of resources to play with. With such limited word count, you have to develop the characters fast, and if you want to make the reader care about them, you don't have much time to do it, because the climax is right around the corner. If you are working with deep, interesting characters, this makes it even harder. Green could have spent her entire word count just developing these twin sisters. Instead, she has to paint their entire lives and relationship as fast as she can in order to move the story forward. Thus, the characterizations come across a little rushed and heavy-handed. I think it would have been nice if they had either tried to show a little less depth, or lengthened the story to allow for smoother development.

The other thing that got me was the first person narrative. I actually have comments on both side for this. First, let me say that I've never been a fan of first person writing. My first impression is almost always "Why are you telling me this?" It hardly ever feels like an actual recounting of the events as experienced by the person telling them. I tend to avoid it myself. However, I did not at first even notice that it was first person, I was just reading. That's a really good thing. Being first person, however, meant Less spent a lot of time telling me how great her sister was, and how pathetic she was. Telling is something said to be avoided in fiction anyway, and this just got a little tiring after a while. I once broke up with a girl for the same reason. Despite that, I did like Less, and really enjoyed her meeting with Mayhem.

In the end, the girls decide to share the identity of the Super Hero. (Is it split personality if you have two people sharing one personality instead of two personalities sharing one person?) Their resolution and disagreement over who is the better sister was a little too easy for me. Perhaps because of the first person narrative, we never got inside More's head. I was rather hoping they would find a way to be super heroes together, but both being the same super hero has some interesting possibilities as well.

My summation: worth reading, I just wanted more of it to read.

You can find more about and from Lisa Gail Green at her website or on her blog. She's also a delightful person to follow on Twitter.

The Rest of the Series:
The Mass Grave of John Johnsons by Micah Urban
Daughter of Nyx by Kelly Wisdom
Going My Own Way by Dayton Ward