BOOK REVIEW: RESISTANCE / AUTHOR: SAMIT BASU / PUBLISHER: TITAN BOOKS / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Serving as a sequel to Turbulence, Resistance explores what follows when the world faces a growing number of meta-humans who are a law unto themselves. Set in 2020, a decade after a flight of passengers gained superpowers thanks to a random occurrence, the world has dramatically changed. Many superheroes are celebrities but humanity itself is losing ambition, seemingly resigned to be lorded over by super-beings. However, someone is killing off these meta-humans one by one, and they have a plan…

Serving as a deconstruction of the superhero genre as much as a celebration of its various tropes, Resistance is a closer examination of the impact superheroes would have on reality. Despite the colourful science-fiction elements present – with nods to super sentai series and kaiju films – there’s a darkly cynical undertone. For everything weirdly wonderful the world offers, there is equally something darkly wrong and problematic which makes everyday life all the harder with every passing week.

Written in a format similar to light novels, it’s a book that readers can easily breeze through at a rapid pace without anything seeming underdeveloped. Furthermore, its sense of scale with heroes traversing entire continents never fails to emphasise the weight of events. This said, the book isn’t as smart as it thinks it is. A lot of this territory has been trodden before by the likes of Warren Ellis, Alan Moore, and Kurt Busiek; while its concepts are never pushed far enough to offer much more than comic readers have seen in Astro City.

Despite this, Resistance is nonetheless a great tale and entertaining from beginning to end. It offers something different from the usual yarn, and is well worth a look for any science-fiction fan.