** spoiler alert ** 
 I liked the overall idea behind this book and I really liked some of the characters, such as Ruth (the idea of a chain-smoking bitter old seer superhero is awesome), Larry (superhero who gets people sick is actually creative and I'm sad he wasn't as developed as Ruth. He needs more backstory) and the father. Thom was, on average, a good character in that I liked his voice and his attitude (when he wasn't being a petulant brat). Unfortunately the rest of the cast wasn't well developed and I was pretty good at guessing the storyline. I don't really think ANYTHING surprised me, aside from Scarlett's secret. As for that, I'm still not convinced it wasn't a little overkill. But I want to emphasize that I love the idea of a gay superhero book and the relationship between Thom and his eventual beau was well done and very sweet. I also liked that the book pulled no punches with its end battle, even though I was a little depressed at the character death. While this wasn't perfect, I hope it encourages more of its ilk. 
 That said, this book had two big flaws. The first was the utter lack of description of anyone. In a superhero book, it's all about the eye-catching appearances, especially if you don't have the comic art to flesh things out for you. I think the author really phoned it in when it came to the description in this book and just relied on clever names to hope people could connect the characters with known heroes/villains. This wouldn't have bothered me if the universe hadn't already had those known heroes/villains, as they were frequently referenced in their comic versions. I know this was supposed to be some clever play on our comic characters being based on this world's real-life versions, but it just wasn't working for me. 
 The second was, regrettably, the one that make it actively frustrating. Thom and the writer's belief that the entire world hates that he's gay. I do understand this is probably the author dealing with some issues from his past, but there are times when the focus on this becomes unbelievable. In a world where there are superheros who can do some serious damage, I think it's pretty far-fetched to believe people would track down a gay superheros house and deface his front door just because he said he was gay on national TV. I also think the villain randomly calling Thom "faggot" in the final fight came out of nowhere since the story had already shown the villain would not care about that sort of thing. Also, Thom's constant belief that if someone was against him, it was because he was gay got old. The father/son approach to this, I didn't mind. It was everyone else. This is why I enjoyed when Ruth hinted that it might be his personality that was winning some sharp looks rather than his sexuality. I don't mind sexual identity books. While I prefer to focus on relationships, I understand why these exist. But I think there is a point where a writer has to step back, look at his world and decide whether his scenario is real or just projection. This really just took me out of the story repeatedly.