The Quantum Prophecy

Notes:

I admit that my first reaction to this book was that it wouldn't take long to write up. After all it's really just a Graphic Novel without the pictures, driven by superpowered action sequences, with a veneer of personal dilemmas and the occasional intrusion of angst to fuel character development. Well, while all that is true, I realised that there was more to be said for this book. Although not much more.

Overall, my initial reaction is still sound: there's enough interest in the different characters and the situations they face to pull you along, the story is action and dialogue-driven and some, at least, of the characters are painted by numbers. Half the plot rides on some scheme which Victor — the bad guy — has hatched, but his character isn't really coherent enough for the reader to understand his motives, and the whole affair just looks like the conventional Doomsday Device plotline.

The main characters — the two boys, and to a lesser extent Renata — have to come to terms with their condition, and then almost immediately with being kidnapped and told the truth about certain things. They're only thirteen, but thirteen is old enough to grow up quickly when needs be. The characters of Facade and Paragon have perhaps the most interest as each must face up to decisions they made long ago.

Families are a bit of a tricky number in this story. Certainly, you have the appearance of three normal families: mother, father, one or two children. But one of the parents is not who he says he is, and in the ten years' masquerade, has — obviously — lived with the wife of the man he's impersonating, and they've had a son. Furthermore, we meet his real counterpart, who's then killed accidentally by his real son, after revealing his motives. There's some attempt at polyfilla when someone points out that the impostor may in fact have come to love the woman he's been living with, but there's no attempt to consider the deeper issues. In addition, Renata's the fourteen she was ten years ago while her family will have moved on. The matter isn't resolved in his book, but you could see her becoming an effective orphan.

The opening scene is set in a classroom and its sole purpose is for the teacher to describe for the reader the events of ten years previously.

A prophecy by one character ten years before forms the major plot premise, but seems to be motivating too many people at once. The idea is that Quantum sees one of the youngsters leading an army which will devastate the Earth. This is justification in several people's eyes, including the boy's father, for damaging his powers and risking the lives of anyone else in the vicinity. Sadly, the storyline degenerates into a “let's just get out of here” superpowered mayhem, and the issue of the prophecy is lost.

Disturbingly, but handled with a certain sensibility, one of the youngsters kills his own father by underestimating his own enhanced strength. This isn't condoned by anyone, least of all the boy, and the circumstances of the meeting are complicated.

There is a very little byplay when Colin is given a spare bed by a friend with two very attractive teenage daughters. One of them comes in to wake him up and embarrasses him by pretending to have noticed that he's wearing nothing under the sheets.

Several characters stress the fact that the power they possess requires that they have a responsibility, while someone else points out that there may well be many enhanced humans who have never wanted to take up that responsibility; we only see those who have. By the end of the book, while neither of the boys has really grown beyond what circumstances have demanded, they have at least some understanding of what challenges are faced by those with greater power.

Colin persuades another youngster from a Youth Shelter to help him find a friend of his parents. The other lad is an adept car thief and is thinking of moving into alcohol smuggling. Colin tries to point out where this is wrong and the lad is offered a straight job by someone.