Refraction by Hayden Scott

refractionFrom Harmony Ink:

Max Jackson is your typical teenage boy, concentrating on his classes at school and being accepted into a good university after graduation. There’s just the small matter of the bomb in his basement, one Max and his fellow members of the “Injustice League” plan to use to level their city’s unethical government. Too bad superhero Crush Goodman puts a stop to their plans. Max understands why Crush would steal the League’s doomsday device, but why is Crush following him around and acting like they’re friends? When the reprehensible Doctor Decay butts his head into Max’s business, Max has to figure out how to save the city he’s always worked to destroy—with or without Crush’s help.

 

Kimi’s thoughts:

This was a short and sweet story but it didn’t quite gel for me. The issues with being short is that you often have a lot of information to cram in and this managed to get just enough background story to it to make me feel as if I’d tuned into a TV episode halfway through the second season without having watched the previous episodes.

The pacing felt a bit off as well and the comedic spin would have been funnier had the characters not been quite so two dimensional. The superhero types were rendered to mere props who were caricatures of cartoons, making the more serious social message Max shares about what the “good guys” and “media spin” less effective than it could have been. Overall, it was a great concept but the execution wasn’t quite there. It left me feeling rushed and vaguely lost.

 

Rating: 3