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Superego: Fathom – Book Review
Superego: Fathom by Frank J. Fleming is the sequel to his 2015 novel Superego, where Fleming tells the story of Rico, the top hitman for one of the biggest intergalactic crime syndicates. Rico is a psychopath – a man with no conscience or ability to empathize with other people. It’s a big part of what makes him so successful in his line of work. He’s never found a problem he can’t shoot his way out of, until he’s forced to pretend to be the good guy and find himself feeling emotions he never knew existed. Like love.
This review will contain spoilers for Superego, so if you haven’t read it yet you should stop now and go buy it. There’s also a short story that’s a prequel to the series – Superego: Personality Test – that you can read for free on Fleming’s website.
Superego: Fathom picks up two months after the end of the first book with Rico waking up from a coma. It (and Rico) hits the ground running and doesn’t stop. It turns out that exposing the corruption in the existing government by wiping out the corrupt politicians and leaders of multiple criminal syndicates on a live galaxy-wide broadcast has some consequences. To make matters worse, his father still is out there with plans in motion, plans that involve Rico. His body is constantly dealing with the poison his father used at the end of the first book and the Fazium that is (painfully) repairing him from the inside out. Plus there’s Diane. Rico has to decide what it means to be a hero and if he can live up to it.
There are a lot of ways that sequels can go wrong. They can try to continue a story that was effectively wrapped up in the first book, or they tell the same story over again. Sometimes they hit the other extreme and change the character in ways that are unbelievable to readers of the original story.
None of those is an issue here. Fleming delivers a whole new story that picks up naturally from where the previous one ended. He brings back some characters from the first story (those that survived anyway) and adds some new players for Rico to deal with. Rico isn’t working alone this time which gives the story the feel of a heist movie. The book is full of the great lines and dry humor that made Superego and Fleming’s other books so enjoyable. It’s a good mix of silly and serious. It’s also insightful. Rico has an outsider’s view on what it means to be human. He can see that Diane’s faith is important to her, but it hasn’t quite clicked enough for him to get why it should matter to him.
I definitely recommend Superego: Fathom. It’s unpredictable (in a good way) and the ending will leave you ready to find out what happens next. (Okay, so maybe that’s a slight spoiler.)
Full disclosure: I was one of the beta readers for this book. Despite that handicap, this book is awesome and you should all go buy it right away.
Published in Literature
Sounds interesting. It can be something to get into the head of a character who is not quite right, if you know what I mean.
He could’ve said in the PIT.