Anything superheroish is going to appeal to me, I picked up The Last Days of Krypton during my trip to the beach earlier this year when it was for sale for $6 at Books a Million. I read the first half at the beach and then just ran out of time.
The fact that I was able to put the book down like that is a testament of how underwhelmed I was when I started reading. I don't think I've read any of Mr. Anderson's novels before, and I've wanted to for a while - as I mentioned before, my love of anything affiliated with superheros, my obvious fascination with sci-fi... how could this go wrong?
I think the real mistake was trying to shoehorn every darn piece of superman lore ever written into the book. 70 some-odd years of history has made the destruction of Krypton a bit of a narrative mess. As the preface states, at one time or another it exploded, its sun went nova or it was destroyed by Brainiac. Kandor gets shrunk and stuffed into a bottle, Argo city gets shot into space. Then we got Zod and the phantom zone.
In the end, this book appears to be a rather noble effort to take a series of random stories about Krypton and weave them into a somewhat coherent whole. I applaud his effort, but it just didn't work. I finished it out of curiosity, partly because I was just unwilling to quit. I think I'll wait before I read another Kevin J. Anderson book. There are only so many chances a writer gets to make a first impression, this one could have been better. Thankfully for me... I hit gold with the next book I read.
I'll post my second review soon!
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