A woman is so broken by life, not only has she adopted the name
Broken, but she is incapable of escape – because there is essentially nothing
she can do to die. She picks a fight, she heals before death. She tries to commit
suicide – it won’t take, she heals after the attempt. The healing is pain. The
pain is the only part of life she ‘enjoys’. Folks…this is the backstory, this
is where it begins. And of course, Broken is a superhero and there was a time
when she could fly.
Broken by Susan Jane Bigelow is extraordinary in its portrayal of superheroes,
or extrahumans, as they are called in Bigelow’s books. Everyone loves a label,
so let’s call this post-superhero literature. This is the maturation of
superheroes in popular culture, and it was originally published in 2011 (and now republished by The Book Smugglers Publishing), so a
few years before the current height of superheroes in pop culture had been
reached.
It’s a few decades into a dystopic future where the US was on the
losing side of a global war. Extrahumans, each with a superpower or two, have
become a tool of the government, both hated and loved, but hated more and more.
A new government has taken over, much more authoritarian, and full of parallels
to groups like the Nazis, or even to the troubling groups in visible in today’s
politics. A baby is born – prescient extrahumans have seen a future where
things get better, seemingly infinitely better. They have also seen a future
where he makes it much, much worse. It falls to a young teen, an unregistered
extrahuman who sees countless possible futures when he looks others in the eyes
– even his own eyes in the mirror, where he has seen his own death too many
times. He finds Broken and together they try.
Given these preferences of my reading, it’s hard for me to say
that I enjoyed reading Broken. It’s
hard, bad things happen, and hope is scarce, though always present in the background.
It’s just not my thing. However, I can see the brilliance of the concept and
the success of the execution. Broken
is an incredible novel, both timeless and perfectly timed to the now. While I
would probably argue that dystopic SFF is becoming overdone to the point of
dulling its impact, the genre is primed for the concept of post-superhero fiction.
And there’s much more to be said than I get into here. It’s done so well that I
just might read the other books of the Extrahuman
Union series, knowing that they aren’t my thing. Because as good as Broken is, I’m very curious to see what
comes next.
The Extrahuman Union Series
Broken: Amazon
Sky Ranger: Amazon
The Spark: Amazon (forthcoming)
Extrahumans: Amazon (forthcoming)
