Review: Phenomenons: Season of Darkness

note: I was a kickstarter backer for this book

With the Phenomenons books, Crazy Eight has created a super hero anthology that takes place in our world like George R R Martin’s Wild Cards series. The main difference is that Wild Cards reads to me as incredibly grimdark; maybe because it was started in the 1980s? The other big difference is that there’s definitely more of a liberal bent to Phenomenons. That might make you more likely to read it, more likely to avoid it, or you might feel indifferent about that. Interestingly, both anthology series mostly take place in New York City.

In this volume each story carries the overall story forward in an almost overlapping way. It made the 2 or 3 stories that seemed more standalone really stand out. I haven’t read volume 3 yet, but since I haven’t seen any new Kickstarters recently, perhaps this was always meant to be a trilogy rather than a long-lived series like Wild Cards.

Since we’re in the second volume, the authors have more room to expand on the characters rather than introduce us to them and their powers. This makes this book a more compelling narrative than the first volume. However, as the second book in the trilogy (or more?) the overarching story is left incomplete. You’ll likely enjoy each of the entries on their own, but you won’t get a final resolution on the main antagonist or what their overarching plan is. (Although the final story gives some very compelling hints)

It would be a bit odd to jump straight into this book, so I’ll say that if you enjoyed volume 1, you’ll likely enjoy volume 2 even more since we get deeper into the characters.

• Superheroes