Almost Infamous: A Supervillain Novel

Carter’s quirky riff on the coming-of-age novel depicts a superhero-dominated world history with a bumptious potty-mouthed narrator named Aidan Salt, from Hacklin’s Hall, Ind. Eighteen and full of teenage rebellion, Aidan discovers his super powers and dons the moniker Apex Strike to train with other wannabe supervillains, in order to become worthy opponents and justify the demand for superheroes. Half of this sporadically amusing strung-out caper deals with Aidan’s stomach-wrenching boot camp experiences on Death Island (the location of which is never specified), resulting in celebratory drug- and hormone-fueled wallows. The rest presents equally noisome choreographed melee between heroes and villains, harrowing drug withdrawals, and Aidan’s gradual realization that opting out of high school mediocrity by adopting the supervillain lifestyle isn’t the nirvana he’d expected. After all of Aidan’s overheated adolescent wish fulfillments, Carter’s simplistic ending seems deflated; a whimper instead of the roar Aidan/Apex had hoped would change his world. (Apr.)