Review: The Nobody People by Bob Proehl

The Nobody People by Bob Proehl
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publication Date: September 3, 2019

This book is not about the X-Men, but you might be forgiven for forgetting that fact as you crack open this 400+ page . . . not doorstopper, because I don't think it quite qualified there, but it's definitely a book of great girth. (Whatever the proper term for that would be.) The Nobody People calls its superpowered humans Resonants instead of mutants, but there are so many parallels that it's impossible to really talk about this book without mentioning its clear inspiration. (Primarily, but not just the X-Men; the author clearly had a lot of fun peppering this book with a plethora of tiny SFF references, from Doctor Who to The Magicians to what I could swear was a dash of The Highlander. But those are easter eggs at best; the X-Men clearly lie at the bones of this story.)

The problem with that, though, is that I didn't feel the author really did anything new with its inspiration(s). It's not an interrogation of the X-Men, or an expansion of the ideas behind that series, though it definitely explores similar (in places, identical) themes of prejudice and power. It's a book that's about many of the same things, and I don't know that lampshading the similarities did anything to elevate this into something more original.

There were things I enjoyed here--there's an almost Stephen King-ish quality to the writing, not in the 'horror' sense but in the episodic attention to characterization--but I also felt the pacing dragged. This is a decently long book, and it often felt even longer, to the point where there were times I had to force myself to keep reading (and not to skim).

Overall, I'd say this is one of those books that I could see others enjoying a lot, but just wasn't entirely my cup of tea.

I received a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.