Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain

You had me all excited; I was hoping it had released early.

I just finished a re-read of Supervillain in preparation for Moon, and it is of course still phenomenal. I was hoping the Kindle edition would auto-update with the changes, but if so it hasn't happened yet.

I am pretty sure that the new edition of Supervillain won't come out until Moon goes live.

"We are going to have such a morally ambiguous good time."

The Inscrutable Machine in a nutshell: "We are supervillains, but we moonlight hero work."

edited 28th Jan '15 11:03:24 PM by 32ndfreeze

Oh, this could be problematic work-wise... I got three chapters in on the bus ride in and another waiting for my machine to boot up and now I'm struggling not to make excuses to just read one chapter more...

... and lunch brings me up to about a third of the way through. We have a potential route to superheroic status, psychic cats, snake oil goat parasites, and Victorian astronauts. It's good.

Just this past five minutes got my own copy on Kindle. Yay!

Hmmm...

Is anyone else (who's finished) a little worried about Penny. Between Mourning Dove's hints at the beginning and the way her power has begun latching on to some pretty disturbing stuff, there's definitely something more going on here than meets the eye and not necessarily something good.

Other observations:

One wonders how Spider will react to what they learned and why they did what they did.

While one understands where she's coming from, it was sad to see Remmy and Penny's burgeoning friendship fall apart. Though I do blame Remmy's brothers for that, at least partially. It's quite clear they were using Remmy for their own means and their willingness to co-opt Penny as well sort of bought that do the front

Penny is going to have problems in the long run if she keeps giving away her best tech. Though given that Archimedes may have turned out more problematic in the long run, in this case I can't blame her.

I enjoyed it, but if this had been the first book of the series, I probably wouldn't have been excited for the sequel.

Some impressions, spoilered on principle but containing no real spoilers:

The change in location felt unnecessary. The earth of this universe still had plenty of places to go, so there was no rush to go extraterrestrial. The whole book felt like a bottle episode, though that description doesn't fit exactly. Self contained would be a better fit, I suppose. This is a problem, as it makes it feel disjointed from the first book and left behind many of the things that made the first one work, such as their family life and the local hero scene. Penny's power also got turned into a tool to fix any problem they were currently facing rather than an interesting factor on its own. Her coolest invention, the Machine also didn't get to strut its stuff enough.

I'm happy that the book did at least shortly comment on the moral lapses of the Inscrutable Machine crew towards the end, but I really hope its given more focus and addressed in any further works. They're supposed to be likably villainous, kids being irresponsible, but some of the stuff they've done without putting much thought into it crosses the moral event horizon hard enough that it needs to, if not have consequences, then at least be discussed or the work will suffer. If you need examples of this, the destruction of Mechs lab, working for Spider who is confirmed as not simply a card carrying villain and mind-controlling innocent bystanders come to mind. There were more examples from the first book but I've forgotten the details, just remember it really bugging me that the kids never discussed it among themselves or how absent reflection on that was from Penny's inner monologue.

edited 30th Jan '15 12:39:58 PM by GabrieltheThird

I feel like the self contained nature of the book worked well, despite feeling a little odd compared to the pacing of the previous novel, but I would like the next one to focus more on the worldbuild-y aspects again. I did find Penny's observations about her fellow classmates very interesting.

It's kind of a good thing for story purposes that Remmy is now an enemy of Penny. Because if you combine Penny's rate of making Class 3 technology and Remmy's seeming specialization in combining mad science it would definitely be a Story-Breaker Power

Finally finished this.

I agree that moving off Earth so quickly felt like a bad idea. Also, maybe it was just me, but I felt like the space stations weren't described enough; I couldn't get a good mental picture of what they were supposed to look like. There were a bunch of other minor problems, but those were definitely the big ones. I enjoyed the start of the novel, with her observing her superpowered classmates and fighting off that random other inventor while pretending to be weaker than she was, a lot more. Did love the expansion of the mythology, of the fight between the Puppeteers and the Conquerors.

Remmy rubbed me the wrong way. In hindsight, I understand why she was so pissed, but I think there wasn't enough emphasis put in the beginning of how much Penny was freaking her out. Using Archimedes to send the Red Herring away just seemed to come out of nowhere. In fairness, it came out of nowhere to Penny too, so maybe that was part of the point. She wasn't paying more attention.

As for the moral ambiguity thing, we did get hints of that, but yeah, actually discussing it would have been a little better. Maybe that can happen next book.

I think the electricity device in the school was planted by Spider in order to set up the null time field excuse. Although it could just be set-up for antagonists in the next book

I'm hoping the the next book focuses on a team of foils to The Inscrutable Machine, either heroes or villains. That means we should get a more world building of the area around where Penny lives. Plus Chinatown, which I really missed its presence in this book.

I love the world building in this series. Like apparently they discovered archaeological evidence that the Iliad actually happened, complete with a bulletproof mummy missing a foot, which is probably Achilles. That's why moving to space was a little annoying; we never really got any answers. Sure, it's a mad science colony, apparently fleeing WWII, but you'd think they'd be more curious on exactly what happened.

So, the title of volume 2 could just as well have been "Spider tries to get Penny and her friends to commit suicide". Not a gracious looser, that arachnid

I also think Penny really needs to have someone with an actual understanding of magic have a look at the statue and the pennies - Because I am very far from sure she is as immune to them as she thinks she is. Every time she picks them up, litany of improbable bad things happen to her. At the very least, if she doesn't want to show the thing to lucy she should try to look the darn thing up!

I would like a bit more detail on Spider's reasoning behind this, but I don't think it was a Uriah Gambit. Considering the emphasis on how stupidly strong a Mad Scientist Penny is, it could easily be just what she said: She picked up a transmission, needed a ship, and thought Bad Penny was the best choice to build it. Plus, she basically got them to do it for free. "The mission is the payment," after all. Not to mention that she needed Vera to serve as an anchor for the Orb of the Heavens' teleportation, and since Apparition can't leave the planet, she needed someone else as a chaperone. May as well be the person who built Vera.

It would be amusing if her power identified them as safe because it just wants her to be close to dangerous things to play around with.

Considering who we are talking about I lean more to the theory that Spider wants to keep The Inscrutable Machine around for how incredibly useful her power is.

This book also made me realize Penny could probably build a planet cracking device in a few hours if she so happened to have the omnicidal urges. So yeah, considering how much Spider knows, I'm sure she realizes how ludicrously strong Penny's power is compared to the average Mad Scientist, and wants to have it working for her.

Of course, Spider has no desire to blow up the planet, or even sell it out to aliens. Her goal appears to be to just make money, and doing it illegally is more fun.

I had a thought regarding the themes of the book. One of the complaints about the first book was that Penny never seemed to fail at anything, while for the second people complained that it took the story out of its established setting—but these two issues are actually related. In Supervillain, Penny's mistakes were covered by the superhuman community of LA. They woke up a dragon, but Mech was around the corner and was able to handle it. Claire got grabbed by Jagged Bones, but Bull wandered by and saved her. Penny made a bomb she didn't know how to disarm, so she left it for a hero as a distraction. In Moon, the team kept making mistakes, but there was no community to help. Penny let loose Puppeteers on Callisto, they had to come back and clean it up themselves almost after it got too far. Penny made Remmy jealous without noticing, there was no one to talk her down and explain. Penny failed to notice that Juno was Obviously Evil, and they almost started another alien invasion. Penny just let her superpower make whatever it wanted without consideration, which caused the entire plot of the book.

edited 3rd Feb '15 12:53:48 PM by Discar

That's a really good point.

Just being in a super nexus like LA, and being seen as a bunch of kids "joyriding" with their powers, gives them a really large pool of heroes/villains that will act as a safety net of sorts before anything truly bad happens.

Still, I do think that sometime in the next book things are going to go south for The Inscrutable Machine. Consider how badly the Claudia and Lucy fights would have gone if they were fought in the second book when Penny had almost no equipment prepared that was not directly related to space travel.

edited 3rd Feb '15 3:15:24 PM by 32ndfreeze

I really think that was the point of this book. They were high on their earlier victories, and blundered in unprepared. So not only do they need to be more prepared from now on, Penny also learned to be more careful about what she builds. Part of the problem is that she kept pushing her inspiration to the back of her mind, which frustrates her power and makes the result even more complicated and dangerous. What she should have done is like what she did with the love potion in the first book: Insist on trying to define it, which kills the idea.

edited 3rd Feb '15 3:26:21 PM by Discar

Just finished a re-read of Moon. Better the second time. Juno is more obvious, and Remmy seems less schizophrenic when you understand he thought process.

Hrm, I'll have to do that sometime. Definitely once I finish Wheel of Time. So, maybe not soon.....

edited 23rd May '15 12:44:26 AM by 32ndfreeze

Today I found out the draft of chapter 1 of book three has been available online for a while.

It seems like this one has the series going back to a similar style of the first book, which I am happy about.

I hope Cassie becomes a prominent character in the book. It seems like Penny's idea of a superhero kids club from the first book could actually take off in this one. Penny being a simultaneous supervillain and hero should be very entertaining to read.

Ooh, I didn't notice that either.

I loved the brief Friendship Moment where Marcia and Penny both agree that Sharky is the stupidest name ever, and can't believe he didn't change it. Also think it would be cool if we got to see more of the superhero club idea. Maybe Sharky can even be in it? I dunno. It will be interesting, because that red-head with superspeed (the one who stole Penny's helmet in Chinatown) knows who she is, and Marcia probably figured it out. So if she does make a club for superheroes, half of them will know she's also a villain.

There are supposed to be four books total, I think. It would be cool if we could get some minor side stories from other perspectives.

Huh, I didn't realize that about the redhead.

I think Sharky could be forced to join if his parents want to try and make sure he doesn't become a villain before becoming an actual competent threat. And what better way to show innocence than by joining the school club for children of superheroes?

It's gonna be hilarious if to the adult population Penny is wonderful for helping students make a new club, but to the majority of actual club members she is their Obviously Evil club dictator president.

edited 30th May '15 9:18:04 PM by 32ndfreeze

Good stuff. I expect that she'll get words from her parents about the destroyed sweater ("Couldn't you have just rolled your sleeves up?"), but it does provide a solid way for her to build hero cred, although it will probably go disastrously wrong, as usual.