I stopped reading this book one chapter in because I really disliked the main character. He’s obnoxiously narcissistic and just incredibly annoying. But I had bought the book so I went back to it and forced myself to give it a second chance. I’m glad I did. The character remains incredibly annoying until he finally starts maturing toward the end of the book, but pushing that problem to the side, this is a very good superhero story and there were a lot of surprises that actually surprised me—and a surprise the author convinced me I was wrong about before springing it again. The villain is also a lot of fun, and the heroes get to be suitably heroic.
The plot revolves around the Puzzler, a two-bit fake villain trying to set himself up for a talk show on TV and million-dollar bestseller book who accidentally gets into a situation where he kills the famous superhero, the Dark Revenger. This isn’t the sort of crime he feels he can successfully walk away from, so he decides to impersonate the Dark Revenger instead and become a crime fighting superhero to keep himself out of jail. The problem is that a world threatening crisis is about to break and the real heroes come to Dark Revenger seeking his help.
There is a lot of action in the novel, and the mystery surrounding how the Puzzler came to kill the Dark Revenger is a good one. I thought the author was going to crash and blow it in the end, but he actually brought the story to a smooth landing.