Review: Villain

Villain by Michael Grant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Who else thinks this cobra-head guy on the cover looks like he stepped out of the Stargate to lay waste to us all? Kinda like this or something.




So effectively noticeable he is, in fact, that he completely manages to overshadow the other big detail on the front cover of this book, a detail I failed to notice until after devouring the whole thing in one sitting - the Las Vegas Strip in the background.

As the follow-up to last year's Monster, Villain is a smaller, but no less batshit, kind of story. Our new cast of characters returns with a new mission, to stop a new and extra-deadly Rockborn 2.0 - Dillon Poe, spoiled rich kid, wannabe comedian (who looks up a little too much to Louis C.K. - yeah, I'm pretty sure this book was largely written before the #MeToo movement and before C.K. was exposed as a serial sexual harasser, but it still very much fits Dillon's characterization) and, now that he's got the ability to talk anyone into anything, he's kinda fitting the mold of the incel terrorist too. And he's dangerous. Very, very, very dangerous. And coming up in a book where we get the return of a few of the worst peeps from Monster, as well as Drake Bloody Merwin, that's saying something.

There's so much action happening in these 300-some-odd pages that there's scant room for character development, but Grant does his best not to skimp on that either. Cruz, I feel, gets the most such development, especially as she finds herself crushing out on Armo, of all people. Which makes sense given that one of Armo's biggest characterizations is how odd the connections are that he strikes up, and yet, they exist nonetheless. As for Cruz, she's also coming more to terms with her own fluid gender identity. Though there are interludes that show us the heads of military and/or espionage types who can't make heads or tails of Cruz's gender (and, because they're such assbutts, they deadname her at least twice that I remember), Cruz still gets to shine more than any of the other non-villainous Rockborn 2.0 characters Grant gives us.

And it wouldn't be a modern-day Michael Grant book without some kind of nods to the fans, would it? Sam and Astrid get to return in this one and have a couple of sweet moments together. Not to mention the number of times the words "morph" and "de-morph" pop up on the page.

Though what really makes this book stand out to me is the increased presence - or, more accurately, lack thereof - of these alien Dark Watchers, for whom the FAYZ and everything that's been born from it and the gaiaphage is just a game. A movie. A comic book.

So that begs the question, going into Hero, hopefully by this time next year...

...are we the Dark Watchers?

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