Becoming Glitch

Cast into action on the first page, what is this collage student doing in a dark alley with a menacingly tall man. Even if we're given answers quickly and get the world explained there is more mysteries to keep the motivation up to delve deeper into the book. The pacing is fast and time flies. The time passing feels realistic as the story takes place over a couple of month for the newfound heroes to develop both their abilities and relationships.

It's a fairly easy read where I'm very comfortable picking this book up on a commute or whenever I have a few minutes of downtime in my day and burst through a chapter. Though I liked the start of the book, I found it hard at the 30-40% mark to keep up interest. Simply put the action in the beginning is lacking imo, but as the book hits its half way point and the plot picks up this changes and I re-found my interest. If you are use to reading R.A. Salvatore and the like the fights are very basic, but it keeps the story moving forward and isnt a bad thing.
It's a simple and effective hero story with the story beats hitting at the right times making it very satisfying to read.

The main character reads like he has ADHD in my opinion, though I don't know how intentional that was. Either way we love neurodiversity whether it is intentional or not!

My rating is 3.5/5

A strong debut for this author, a superhero novel with heart and some depth to it. While it does go dark in places, it's not relentlessly so, and it pulls off the difficult feat of taking a slacker character (cruising by on his intelligence at a college that's not challenging him, while spending much of his time playing computer games and eating microwave meals) and turning him into a hero. We see, from inside the young man known to his friends as Andy and for superhero purposes as Glitch, his growth in courage and effectiveness, and how his friendships with a gruff ex-Marine, a perky, optimistic highschooler, an idealistic and poised immigrant, and a self-doubting man looking for somewhere to belong change him and help him to become more than he was. The title is well chosen; this is a coming-of-age story, but one that's better executed and less cliched than most. It involves no romance, which I think was a good choice on the author's part. Instead, the relationships that matter are friendship, mentorship and team loyalty.

A slight weakness for me was that the city authorities were handled tropishly and also kept almost entirely offstage, as potential minor antagonists who never really materialized. Their incompetence and bad priorities have resulted in a crime-ridden city which also seems to have an unusual number of fires, and the vigilante hero team step in where the cops and firefighters are inadequate to rescue people. There's not much sociological or political insight into the situation on show, and depending on your perspective, that could be a missed opportunity or a well-calculated avoidance of a potential distraction from the central story, which is Andy's growth into his hero persona under pressure of the challenges posed by becoming involved in crime prevention, fire rescue, and eventually supervillains.

Although I got a review copy via Netgalley, the publication date indicates that it's already published, not a pre-publication version, so I will mention the editing. The author, in his acknowledgements, thanks his sister (also apparently an author) for help with copy editing and grammar lessons; apparently his sister does not know the very important and basic rule that you should always use a comma before or after a term of address, such as a name. It needs going over by a professional editor, mainly for that but also for a few other common problems, including words missing or inserted in sentences, apostrophes in the wrong places and the occasional homonym error. I will note at this point that, with few exceptions, superhero fiction tends to be poorly edited; I don't know why.

The state of the editing dragged it down one tier in my Best of the Year list, from Gold to Silver. But it's a promising start to what I hope will be a series, or at least a career.

This story was amazing! Three dimensional characters, indepth plot, well thought out consequences to actions. We follow the perspective of Andy who has recently developed super human abilities and watch as he comes to realize that life is not a comic book. Every character grows and changes. Five stars.
This book was given to me by NetGalley in exchange for my fair and unbiased

I think that some of the most interesting urban fantasy writer are self-published and you discover them by serendipity.
This is another one I thoroughly enjoy as it's well plotted, entertaining, and featuring fleshed out characters.
There's some dark moments, there's humour, and a solid plot.
It's strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Overall a great story for a debut. In my opinion this book is more YA than adult. I loved the concept, plot and diverse characters. I think the way Glitches ability or enhancement was explained throughout was really awesome. Its so different from the basic teleportation that you see in most superhero books!

what i found super intriguing was the “cut scenes” back and forth to the bad guys (Claws’ gang) and the hero’s (Glitches team). This feature kept me engaged and wanting to know more about how the story would unfold.

Another aspect i liked was Dreamstress and CIG’s grumpy x sunshine duo. It was a good contrast. The only thing i would have liked better is if maybe CIG was a bit younger. I seen him as a “father figure” to them (ex marines), if he would have been maybe closer in age with Glitch and this be a group of all teen hero’s i think id have enjoyed it a bit more. (This would apply to Voice, as well)

I can totally see this book as a comic or a TV series! Overall, fantastic debut… Hope to see more from Daniel in the future!
#becomingglitch

A coming of age, superhero origin story is not my usual reading material but I enjoyed this book.

This would be a great graphic novel as well. I expected more action and less dialogue, introspection, and philosophizing. I would’ve liked to learn more about the fever and the science behind the various abilities.
Still, I enjoyed the action scenes. I appreciated that it never got too gory.

This definitely read like the start of a series. Not a whole lot was resolved or explained.