Review: Overlook, by Jon Mollison

All of the Silver Empire superhero books released thus far are awesome.

But Jon Mollison may write my favorite of the bunch.

And this is out of an elite batch of authors, all of whom excel in their subgenres.

Morgon Newquist's Heroes' Fall was more classic superhero.

Kai Wai Cheah's Holly City was more police procedural or noir thriller.

[easyazon_link identifier="B07ZPCNWT1" locale="US" tag="upstreamreviews-20"]Jon Mollison's Overlook[/easyazon_link] is more spy thriller. I could almost hear Jeffery Donovan's Michael Weston narrate this one.

Deal alert: On the date of this review, [TITLE] is only $0.99 on Kindle!

The story

As the old poem goes,  "Last night I saw upon the stair, /A little man who wasn't there,/ He wasn't there again today /Oh, how I wish he'd go away..."

[easyazon_link identifier="B07ZPCNWT1" locale="US" tag="upstreamreviews-20"]Overlook[/easyazon_link]begins with a low key version of a James Bond opening, but it's one of the better fight scenes I've read in a while. It's clear, well blocked out, and sets up the rest of the book as perfectly as one of those over the top Bond scenarios.

Our hero, is an average man -- average color, hair, eyes, appearance. Before he received his super powers, he was a sniper instructor, and already a bit of a ghost (insert John Ringo joke here). One day, he just ... disappeared.

But now, he's the little man who wasn't there. He's the middle child of five sons. He is so invisible, he has to cook his own food at a diner. When he's adrift at sea, he has to save himself, because no one would see him and save him.

His name? Joe Smith. Just plain Joe. Because of course that would be his name.

Despite avoiding trouble as best he can, it finds him anyway. Because with great powers comes great headaches. And one is about to find him. It starts with a simple murder, and evolves into a conspiracy of the Phoenix Ring -- an organization so monstrous and so complex, the leads are less dead ends "and more of a knotted ouroboros with multiple heads eating its own multiple tails."

And that's a nice little sample of what the narration's like. There's at least one car chase so awesome, it needs a Hans Zimmer soundtrack.

If one were to compare overlook to the average thriller, it would be more like [easyazon_link identifier="B07PGK6XLT" locale="US" tag="upstreamreviews-20"]Adam Hall's Quiller series[/easyazon_link]-- like with Hall's work, there are moments when one reads along, there's a cliffhanger, and then the reader must keep going in order to find out what happened.

The characters

Joe doesn't have the powers of Superman, or the tech of Batman. He gets beaten up a lot. Unlike Jim Rockford, he makes certain that if he's going to get a beating, he's going to give at least as good as he gets.

Additional props must be given to the design of the villains of the piece. They are freaking evil. Imagine a Dean Koontz villain... then tone down the mustache twirling to a reasonable level. Perhaps using [easyazon_link identifier="0743234928" locale="US" tag="upstreamreviews-20"]CS Lewis' NICE from That Hideous Strength[/easyazon_link]. The enemy here is no less evil, with similar methods and motivations. They're anti-technology because technology makes it harder to control the masses, and their inquisitors look like a gender studies Umbrage of Rowling fame.

The world

The world-building for [easyazon_link identifier="B07ZPCNWT1" locale="US" tag="upstreamreviews-20"]Overlook[/easyazon_link]is mostly built around the Phoenix Ring. It's a very well constructed conspiracy that makes the Illuminati look like a bad X-Files episode. (I am assured that there were some good episodes of said series.)

Jon also expands on powers and abilities, not only of Joe Smith, but of other characters. Each book of Silver Empire's Heroes Unleashed universe comes up with new and unique ways of using superpowers, as well as getting around superpowers. Jon's work is no exception

The politics

The Phoenix Ring is less a reductio ad absurdum of a lot of current trends, and more like the logical outcome. They're scary because we could look around and see exactly how they would be the end result of current events--social and political.

.... As I said above, they're like a Dean Koontz or CS Lewis villain.

Content warning

It's superhero fiction, only with a few more guns. There was more action than violence.

If the language was harsher than PS-13, it made no impression on me.

Who is it for?

Fans of Jim Butcher, Adam Hall, John Ringo, Dean Koontz and even Carrie Vaughn will love this.

Why read it?

This book is so awesome, I even like the narration. The villains are well developed, the heroes are even better. Overlook is for anyone who likes spy thrillers, or comic books the way they used to be. The heroes are heroic, and human enough to be hurt--but not so human they're given arbitrary and gratuitous faults. The villains are evil bastards who need to be beaten. Short version -- if you've read the other Silver Empire novels, Overlook is a great continuation of the universe. If you haven't read the previous works, this is an excellent stand alone novel.