All that Glitters is not Gold: Reviews by jonbrain

Midnight by Hero-N

What do you get when you take the child of a wealthy billionaire, murder his parents in front of him, allow him to grow up into the city's biggest playboy, then kidnap him and teach him martial arts in Tibet so that when he returns he vows vengeance and dons a black outfit to become a vigilante by night?

The answer, unfortunately for this story, is Batman. This is the origin story of Batman. Or Iron Man, if you're a Marvel fan and refuse to give Batman the time of day.

Desmond Peirce is also just such a man. Born into billions of dollars which he inherited when his parents are murdered by terrorists, Peirce jumps from party to party, bar to bar, without a care in the world aside from his one care: the memory of his father's last words, spoken to him as the flames of his home burn around him. The memory of his greatest failure, when he could not save his own father from dying. He wasn't strong enough. Now, he flirts and drinks and sleeps around; if only it actually made him feel any better.

All this changes the day he is suddenly kidnapped by the Black Dragon, the most deadly and dangerous terrorist cult the world has seen. He is drugged and dragged who knows where, held in a cell with no contact with the outside world. Oh, he's fed every day, of course. And he is paid some attention; every so often, he is brought to Doctor Harrison and injected with something strange, a blue liquid that causes him to writhe in agony. He is being prepped, so he is told, for "Project Belletor," which Harrison helpfully explains is Latin for "warrior." In just a couple days, the man who owned the world became the man who was dead to it.

Oh, did I mention that he was thought dead by the world? Well, yes he was, as he learns in a few days when a second prisoner, a woman named Olivia who claims to be a reporter, is placed in the same cell as him. Little does he know that in a couple of days, that report may not be so far from the truth. Death doesn't care if you're a billionaire or a superhuman, after all. Will Project Belletor and the mysterious "Master" of the Black Dragon finally finish the job they started all those years ago?

Sadly, this book doesn't profit much from its explicit similarity with several more popular figures of its genre. I may not have said this until now, but I don't mind cliches in principle; if I keep writing after my next two projects are finished, I plan to create the most cliched mystery novel in history. It will be a dark and stormy night, and there will be ten or twelve suspects, and there will be footprints in flowerbeds and about six different affairs and seven different poisons, and it will be awesome. So I'm not coming down on this just because I've seen it before.

But, you guessed it, I am coming down on it.

I never really engaged with this book. The characters never stood out to me; they just kind of did what they were supposed to. The plot didn't offer any surprises, which is not in itself problematic, but combined with bland characters and a world we've seen before, doesn't add up to the most gripping work of fiction in the world.

Let me put it this way. The first Iron Man movie was in a lot of ways an unremarkable movie, at least compared to the things that came afterward. But I love it because of Tony Stark, and especially the way that he's portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. He's not a character that things happen to; he happens to the story. One thing happens to him, and that's the terrorist kidnapping in the beginning. Everything else is driven by Tony Stark. Obadiah Stain would never have gone after him if he hadn't built the Iron Man suit and ended his weapons research. Tony Stark is dynamic. Desmond Peirce isn't. He's kidnapped. He's modified into a super soldier. Then he escapes, of his own accord, but only because the Black Dragon screwed up and juiced him on super-soldier serum, so it's not really him doing it. Then Olivia drags him to a Tibetan temple, where Sensei teaches him to fight (yes, he really was called Sensei). All more or less against his will. Then we skip three months, he's forced to flee, and then we start seeing him take initiative as he faces the Master in New York. But by now it's the third act. Stark got pissed and started building the Iron Man armor immediately. Bruce Wayne was offered the chance to train with the League of Shadows, but he had to complete a task to do it. It was his choice. Peirce doesn't choose any more than he has to for the entire book. And that's why it really doesn't profit by comparing itself to Batman and Iron Man; it just doesn't compare in so many ways.

The book is also extremely short, which helps it in some ways, because I read it in a single sitting when I otherwise probably wouldn't have finished it. But because it's short, it sacrifices a lot of action and character building for plot points and time, and that doesn't help it out either.

The writing was good, and the action clear and understandable. The world I think could have stood more development, but without more time, I don't know how possible that would have been.

Final score for Midnight is 3 out of 5 billionaire super-vigilante origin stories. I definitely enjoyed it, and it didn't irk me the way some books have. At the end of the day, it was just meh, nothing offensive or shocking, but nothing remarkable either. I have no real interest to read the sequels, of which there may be many. But it wasn't bad, and I think with more work, it could be pretty dang cool. There is potential, and I give points for that. But at the end of the day, that's all it was; potential.

Thanks for reading another amazing review! Please vote and comment whether you agree or disagree! As always, the real jonbrain.