Re: (review) Super Supportive by Sleyca

On 2024-06-12, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:

In article <lcsiijFiuo4U1@mid.individual.net>,
Chris Buckley  <alan@sabir.com> wrote:

>
surface view is being gradually devalued as you read carefully more.
It's even worse than what James said - he was wrong when he said
superpowers were given to those who volunteered and worked hard. The
Avowed are not volunteers

>
If I was not in Dance Season hell I'd go back and reword the review a bit.

If you do, the one other mistake you'd be lambasted for in the Patreon is
saying that Joe was nicknamed by Alden. "Joe" was what he told Alden to
call him by (names are important.)

Joe is an interesting character, as you say. He's currently on the
outs with the vast majority of readers, though I would disagree.  (If
we had to predict who would be on Alden's side and who would be on
Team Antagonists when we finally get to the main conflict, I would disagree
with most reader's placements.)

The situation about powers is complicated: our hero works towards getting
powers, is repeatedly warned the odds are against him, gets lucky. Kids of
supers have better odds of being selected than do regular people but it's
still dice rolls. One family in particular has worked out to game the
system but the powers they chase involve luck manipulation.
>
(also, people can swap powers if they want... as long as they act
quickly) 
>
>

The hard questions of worthiness of sacrifice are just beginning to be
explored now. Sleyca obviously has a well-developed idea of where she
wants to take her themes, the question is whether she'll be able to
continue writing at such a high level.

>
I didn't come across anything that unabigiously IDed the author's
gender, so I have them down as "unknown".

Buried in the tens of thousands of comments is a reply from Sleyca
that her preferred pronoun is "she".  Not much is known about
Sleyca. She claims to be a web designer living in the Pacifc time
zone.  She's unfamiliar with Patreon (before this novel - my estimate
is she's grossed over 250K so far with it).  My guess is she's an
established author, whether it be several Kindle Unlimited ebooks or
something much more impressive.

The Patreon readers are pretty clearly worried about burnout and are
urging her to write less!

>
Some people have just the one writing speed....

But her chapters keep getting longer, and her releases keep getting later!

It's an impressive novel, IMO.  Most readers are still viewing it in terms
of black and white, good vs evil. But I think she's set up a beautiful
world underneath that of grays, of hard choices both in the past and to come.
I'm looking forward to it!

Chris