The Shootout Solution

Underwood (Hexomancy) launches the Genrenauts series of novellas with this disappointing episod. The story is occasionally entertaining, but it's undercut by a plot both slight and trite, and a narrative voice too obsessed with snarky pop culture references to allow the story to grow. Leah Tang is an aspiring and generally unsuccessful stand-up comic. After a disastrous performance in which she digresses into a rant about her background as a young genre fan, she's approached by Dr. Angstrom King, a comparative literature professor. He explains that there are alternate worlds, each dedicated to fictional genres, and when things go wrong in those worlds, they affect Earth drastically. His team%E2%80%94the Genrenauts%E2%80%94goes in to fix things, and he wants Leah to join them. It's an entertaining enough concept, and the diverse cast of characters is a nice change of pace. Alas, the clich%C3%A9s of genre literature are a little too on point, and Underwood neglects to twist or undermine them. The meta-trope of Leah as a chosen one never goes anywhere, and her excessive need to highlight pop-culture references distracts from the story itself. There's potential for growth, but not much incentive for readers to return. Agent: Sara Megibow, KT Literary. (Nov.)