X-Men: Smoke and Mirrors

First I would like to say that I love the X-MEN. They are my second favorite superhero/team and I've had this book on my to-buy list for a very long time - mostly because I heard that a lot of the focus was on two of my favorites: Rouge and Gambit. I mean, just look at the front cover. Those two and throwing Wolverine in for good measure (another favorite of mine) and it's a recipe for success. Right?

Let's talk about what was done well. Shahar obviously understands the characters. The author managed to get inside their heads with ease. While I really wished a couple of the characters hadn't the attention that they did, (I've never liked Scott or Jean) I grew attached to each of them. Honestly, I even liked the ‘new' mutant group - much more than I thought I would when they were first introduced.

Now, what wasn't done so well. First (as in the first thing that jarringly caught my attention) was the fact that I do not believe Shahar knows how to storyboard a timeline. This book was all over the place. And not in the form of flashbacks, either. You would be following on person or group, being told at least once what time it was, and then you would jump to the next group or person. The problem with that? The first segment took place at eight am - the next at four am. Of the same morning! Someone left the storyline before page one hundred...but it took until after page two hundred before the timeline for everyone else had caught up to that event. Flashbacks are fine. But what was going on here defies explanation. It was as though Shahar was just throwing things into the book as they were thought of.

Or, what brings be to another fault in the book, Shahar was unable to focus on any character for a length of time. Usually, there were little line breaks every page or two - and more often than not, those would signify a shift in character point of view. The only time that didn't happen much was in the first three chapters (which, combined, were shorter than a later chapter) - and a couple of times with Wolverine. Quite often, this shift in the point of view character would only shift from one to the next in a group that was already together. The scenes didn't change, only the viewpoint character did (like too many people were fighting over the camera).

A couple of smaller issues for me were as follows. This is only the second X-MEN written media that I've ever been exposed to. (The first was a comic book that dealt with some alternate reality where Gambit was some sort of master thief.) Honestly, I wish there had been a few less references to a story that I never read and most likely never will. At the beginning of the book there's an author's note that states: ‘This novel takes place three-and-a-half months after the events[...]'. I really wish that the events hadn't been mentioned as much, or that they had been more fully explained. For someone that didn't read the story that they came from, some of the motivation seemed a little off.

The other small problem was the plot. I know, considering I bought the story anyway, I have no room to complain about that. But, as it says on the front cover of the book, Sinister is involved. That really should have not been the big reveal it was in the story as I imagine most readers could easily figure out where he was long before his character was revealed. Also, the government/mutant thing has been done to death and - in my personal opinion - this story added nothing new.

Finally, I was all set to give this book a three star review. For all my problems, I really did enjoy it. Then I reached the ending. The last two chapters were easily the worst of the whole story. Some of the point of view characters only stuck around for a sentence or three and occasionally you couldn't even tell whose eyes you were looking through. And the ending itself was a major cop-out. When I read a book, I expect resolution - unless it is the first two books of a trilogy. This book was supposedly a stand-alone novel. However, very little was actually resolved. Naturally, Sinister was not defeated. That's not a spoiler. Sinister is never defeated. It was a mistake how much of a role the author gave Sinister. The ending itself - as in the last three or so pages - resolved nothing of the main storyline. We didn't even get to look back at the main characters, to see how they were holding up after the events. It was like Shahar had a certain number of pages to fill and once the author reached that number, the story just ended.

Besides the aforementioned X-MEN that showed up, Beast and Storm as well were involved. (Not to sound like a broken record but: two more of my favorites. In fact, before I watched the animated series, when my only X-MEN exposure had been the movies, Storm was my favorite female.) Also a woman by the name of Psylock was in the story. I have never even heard of her before so... And of course, Professor X was there.