Ex-Superheroes 2 ( Ex-Superheroes #2)

too many scenes about sex, or describing sex, or with characters who can’t keep their mind off sex. That is what this story left with me.

I was a bit hesitant to purchase this book as I remembered the first one in the series failed to impress me with the characters. This one did a good job reminding me of just how little story was hidden in the pages.

Honestly, its not bad, it just has characters too interested in sex to be full-fleshed and interesting. I don’t mind romance or even a good seduction, but this was far to juvenile to manage that level of complexity. In the end I skimmed over the sex scenes and found a intrigue that wasn’t tight enough to keep me interested at a high level.

Fun, but faulty. I give it 3 stars.

Yes, the sex scenes are frequent. Anyone who complains about this probably forgets that this is the same author who brought us a series that is literally just called “Succubus”.

On the subject of said scenes, they strike me as far less gratuitous than the previous novel. There’s a wide variety of reasons they occur and proverbial “vibes” between each one, from exploring the previous and current relationship between the MC and his former love interest, to a hate-bang with a villain literally named Mindf***. I personally found that one uncomfortable and not really that scintillating, but the main character felt the same way, so it conveyed what it was supposed to.

Now, the story proper is a little hard to follow due to the sheer number of factions at play compared to the last one, but I got the jist of it. We have a self-entitled Silicon Valley billionaire who’s [more] evil [than the usual ones] and unfortunately has a death grip on both San Fran as well as our hero’s means of fighting him. So, there’s a lot of what I call “loyalty tennis,” where we bounce back and forth between two warring factions trying to figure out how to deal with each. It’s like a mini version of the Iran-Iraq War, in that you’ll be thinking, “It’s a shame they can’t both lose.”

MC’s still as I recall him, being a former anti-villain with a leash on his neck and a suitcase on his emotions. Japanese girl’s still basically there to be a sexy problem-resolver, though she does have one or two moments of insight to share that make her more than just a bouncing ball of hentai cliches. Nova’s actually started developing beyond her sexual urges for the MC, and you can see the cracks beginning to form in her subdued “ra-ra Amarica!” personality. It’s not enough to suggest that she’d rebel against her government (which, ironically, would be the most American thing to do), but you do get the sense that she’s moving to a more nuanced outlook on things. She can almost be interpreted as a metaphor for post-1940s America, becoming less about transparent good vs. bad and more about propping up the lesser of the evils arrayed in opposition.

I will say that said evil, a villain named Raider, REALLY grates on the nerves at times. I know he’s supposed to do that, and I know the lead feels as I do, but I feel there were ways to make him annoying without annoying us, the audience. Make him someone you love to watch but would hate to be around, you know?

I wish the story was a little more story and a little less sex. Besides that it was a fun comic book like read. I hope the next book tones down the sex just a bit to focus on the fun world A.J. Markam has envisioned. Either way Ill be picking the next installment.

As with all of Markam books, there is a look of explicit and unbelievably sex. Get past that and you get good writing, an interesting plot, and characters that appear real. I bought one if his books years ago and was turned off by the explicit, close to pornographic sex. I waded through it and found it surprisingly good. You have to be careful, because Amazons engine thinks you will like harem novels….I dont. I like Marksms writing, however. He could write plain science fiction and that would be even better and sell well. So, five stars fir the plot and writing with one star deducted for the gratuitous sex.

If you read the first book, you know what to expect and get plenty of it. It’s a great addition to the Succubus series with enough difference in flavor to appreciate both the author’s series

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