Sunday, August 16, 2015

Lois Lane: Fallout

By Gwenda Bond

Lois Lane is starting a new life in Metropolis. An Army brat, Lois has lived all over—and seen all kinds of things. (Some of them defy explanation, like the near-disaster she witnessed in Kansas in the middle of one night.) But now her family is putting down roots in the big city, and Lois is determined to fit in. Stay quiet. Fly straight. As soon as she steps into her new high school, though, she can see it won’t be that easy. A group known as the Warheads is making life miserable for another girl at school. They’re messing with her mind, somehow, via the high-tech immersive videogame they all play. Not cool. Armed with her wit and her new snazzy job as a reporter, Lois has her sights set on solving this mystery. But sometimes it’s all a bit much. Thank goodness for her maybe-more-than-a-friend, a guy she knows only by his screenname, SmallvilleGuy…


Superhero nerd that I am, I’m always willing to try out a decent sounding incarnation of a comic. I’ve never been a fan of Lois Lane. I was always a little dumbfounded why Superman/Clark Kent fell for such an abrasive and annoying woman. I mean, Superman is a symbol of pure goodness (or is supposed to be). The least annoying (and most accurate) version of Lois Lane to me was Teri Hatcher’s Lois from “Lois and Clark” and even then she felt off. I like to keep an open mind, so when this young adult version of Lois Lane’s origins popped up on my Goodreads account I was more than willing to bite.
Lois as a sixteen-year-old character was done surprisingly well. She’s a girl who has moved twice as many times as she is old, and has had to build up a thick wall of protection, and not just because her Dad is a general and makes sure his daughters know how to look out for themselves. She desperately wants friends, but not just any friends, people who ‘get’ her. She’s driven, ambitious, and she wants the truth. She wants everybody to have a fair shot.
Que a new school and a chance to help a girl who is being bullied, and Lois jumps all over it, even if it goes against her new motto of flying under the radar. The plot gets trippy as we’re introduced to futuristic tech with holograms and games that can literally change neurons in your brain to help it feel more realistic. (which I kinda wanted to play, and kinda hope never happens) Let the mind games begin. Lois, being Lois, is offered a job by none other than Perry White himself at a high school online newspaper called the Scoop, a subsidiary of the Daily Planet. Lois feels like she’s finally found her calling, and is desperately trying to help her new friends, the first friends she’s had since grade school, without them thinking she’s a complete psychopath for believing that there is ‘more out there’. Que her best friend, whom she hasn’t met IRL, and doesn’t actually know his real name: SmallvilleGuy. She meets him on a conspiracy website after witnessing the impossible one night in Kansas with her father. SmallvilleGuy believes in the impossible, and wants to help this girl who is always getting into trouble. Lois is dying to know, who is this guy really?
This was fun to read, I devoured it in about two days. It was action oriented, had a good amount of tension, a little sci-fi, and the beginnings of something *ahem* great. If you like comic books and Superman, you’ll like this modern retelling of a heroine worthy of the most iconic superhero in the world. This is the Lois Lane I can see being with the Man of Steel.

I give it a 3.75 out of 5 (though close to a 4 for the genre) 

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