Title: After The Golden Age
Author: Carrie Vaughn
Rating: 3.5/5 Superhero Masks

Synopsis: Can an accountant defeat a supervillain? Celia West, only daughter of the heroic leaders of the superpowered Olympiad, has spent the past few years estranged from her parents and their high-powered lifestyle. She’s had enough of masks and heroics, and wants only to live her own quiet life out from under the shadow of West Plaza and her rich and famous parents.

Review: There is something to be said for stand alone novels. They’re hard to find in the fantasy genre now, which is a shame because sometimes I just crave getting real closure at the end of a book. Plus, there is an invaluable added suspense, not being 100% certain that the main character is going to survive whatever situation gotten themselves into. No one needs to survive for a sequel, that’s tense. One of my favorite authors, Carrie Vaughn, has been churning out stand alone books on top of her Kitty books for the last year or so. Yay! They haven’t been getting super fantastic reviews but they’re still fun reads.

I enjoyed this one. While it is all about superheros (yay!) there is a very relate-able themes of living up to the expectations of your parents and not being able to ever fully escape past mistakes. The main character Celia grew up the daughter of two mega superheros who had dedicated their lives to protecting ‘Commerce City’ and who were always just waiting to see what powers their daughter would develop. What powers does Celia get? None, and that is what pretty much defines her. So after making some bad choices Celia decides she can’t live up to the pressure and breaks away from her parents, attempting to live a normal life, as an accountant no less.

The romance in this book isn’t remotely predictable, and that manages to be both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s fun when things don’t go quite how you expect but sometimes things are stereotypes for a reason. This book lacked some of the hallmarked budding romance moments that while expected still give you the warm and fuzzies to read about. It was all just handled a little awkwardly but since the romance was a secondary (if that) plot line, it didn’t effect the book too much, but it still would have been a nice addition.

The characters were very reminiscent of traditional comic book superheros but with a more obvious shade of gray, something novels can give you that comics aren’t always able too. Celia feels like she is the only person who sees her parents as real people when the rest of the world is so busy seeing Captain Olympus and Spark. Her take on the world she was born in to is sometimes a-typical and usually very dry and funny.

Overall, I liked it but probably won’t be rereading it. Carrie Vaughn is still one of my top four, probably even top three and I won’t hold the fact that this book wasn’t earth shattering against her because I enjoyed it and really, that’s what I was hoping for when I picked this book up. That and book characters in spandex, I pretty much got that too! Hurrah!