Review: Miles Morales

Miles Morales by Jason Reynolds
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

*enters the room in full-on Oliver Queen mode*

JASON REYNOLDS, YOU HAVE STOLEN THIS DREAM! IT WAS RICKY PINE WHO WOULD ONE DAY WRITE THE SPIDER-MAN BOOK THAT WOULD TAKE THE WORLD BY-

*bursts out laughing*

I'm sorry, I just had to go there...seriously, though, it was a dream of mine for years that I would be the first to write an official YA Spider-Man novel for Marvel. Though I had Peter Parker in mind, and clearly Marvel had other plans. And these other plans have given us a result, in Jason Reynolds' Miles Morales novel, that far and away exceed anything I could have ever brought to the table.

Though I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable about Miles Morales as I am about Peter Parker (mostly because I tend to focus my Spidey-knowledge on the movies as opposed to the comics), this book is pretty quick to fill in a lot of the backstory involved. Not all of it, mind you, but enough to establish, say, Miles' friendships (now I can see why so many people thought Ned in Homecoming would be a stand-in for Ganke - let's face it, he kinda is) and also his family ties. He lives with both of his parents, and is at least moderately religious (or just puts on that appearance while at home), helping him stand out in sharp contrast not only to Peter Parker, but to many other YA heroes and heroines. But his family, particularly his dad's side of it, has a pretty checkered past, and he worries that the propensity for hustling - found in his dad and uncle and, as he finds out while reading the book, maybe even the cousin he never knew about until now - might be genetic and he's drawn that unlucky number in the DNA lottery.

Speaking of DNA, just like in Spider-Man: Homecoming, this book begins with Miles already having acquired his powers - and one of the few details I knew going into this book was that in addition to the usual array of Spidey-powers, like wall-crawling and Spidey-senses and the like, Miles also has the ability to camouflage. Seeing Reynolds put that power in action in the book brought back a lot of Danny Phantom memories for me. Spidey-sense, though, is the power that's most important to the story by far, because it leaves Miles jumpy as hell, constantly needing to get the hell out of the room and find out what's overloading his instincts so. In fact, at one point, in one of many "little things" kind of details that I picked up on and related to and super-appreciated throughout this book, Reynolds even describes Miles' Spidey-sense overload as a "full-on meltdown." Since I'm autistic - hyperlexic, to be precise - that resonates with me very strongly and makes me want to headcanon Miles as autistic. It wouldn't be the first time I headcanoned a version of Spider-Man as neurodivergent - I already projected a lot of my own autism-spectrum symptoms onto Garfield's Spidey (as if I didn't relate to him enough), and I'm still convinced Holland's Spidey has ADHD, and possibly autism as well because he also talks about his Spidey-sense giving him serious overload. Why should Miles be any different in this regard?

(Funny I keep bringing up various incarnations of Peter Parker for comparison. Reynolds doesn't mention Peter once in this book - it's Miles' story, and Miles' alone.)

Keeping neurodivergence in mind helps really understand this novel a hell of a lot better. Though I still consider it kind of a crossover between MG and YA (having just started a new bookstore job, I recommended this book to the mother of a ten-year-old boy), having read it, I notice that it really does have a stronger foot on the YA side of the fence. Not only because of its occasional PG-13 level cussing, not only because of the heavy issues involved (in particular, racism, coming not only from the history teacher whose blatantly white-supremacist lectures repeatedly set off both Miles and his love interest Alicia, but even from the dean of his school, who, after a robbery, is convinced that Miles is the culprit even though there's no proof), but also because this novel incorporates aspects of a genre I don't think has ever been attempted in MG lit before.

While this book actually features comparatively little of Miles doing whatever a spider can (though there are a few standout scenes of him kicking ass and taking names), Reynolds instead chooses to pack this book full of a different kind of meat by turning it, at times, into a nail-biting psychological thriller. Without getting into spoilers, let's just say that the Big Bad in this book reads like Mysterio by way of Get Out (and bear in mind I've been spoiled severely for Get Out and still haven't seen that movie yet, but I will eventually, I promise!) The Big Bad's method for coming at Miles isn't physical - instead, he comes at him in his nightmares, which are some seriously disturbing stuff. They even call to mind, for me, some elements of my own books, particularly Red Rain where Alex infrequently sleepwalks due to his own nightmares. Miles, of course, doesn't sleepwalk - instead, he sleep-crawls on the ceiling, which actually leads to a moment of comic relief when his sleep-crawling gives Ganke a waking nightmare and makes him share the pain with his bromantic partner.

Bottom line, this book is now virtually locked in to win first place in the Pinecone Awards at the end of this year. Apologies to King's Cage and The Hate U Give, which were both clawing for first place up till now. I also need to read all of Jason Reynolds' other books, which I've neglected to do. As for this one, I'll keep on recommending it as a middle-grade crossover title good for ten-year-old kids to read, and hope against hope that Marvel has Reynolds write us more official Spidey books in the future. No way can this New York Times bestseller be a standalone, not when Reynolds has given us such a pitch-perfect book! And as for connecting this one to the MCU, well, let's just hope that the sequels to Homecoming actually introduce us to the first-ever on-screen version of Miles Morales, especially after his presence was already implied pretty strongly in Homecoming anyway.

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