Super Sales on Super Heroes Books 1-3 by William D. Arand Review (Book Review, 2017-2019)
Felix lives in a world where superpowers are common. He has powers, too, but they’re pretty terrible. He can pull up a DnD character sheet for anything he owns and upgrade traits with a limited supply of points. Where he lives (Skipper City), superheroes are illegal and supervillains run everything. Slavery is also legal. While trying to buy a supply of lead bricks to turn into gold, Felix accidentally buys an auction of three nearly-dead superheroes. Suddenly, his point totals are exponentially higher than ever before, high enough to bring the heroes back from the brink of death. Felix has a new business idea now: buying superheroes at auction to work in a pawn shop, where he can purchase junk and upgrade it to incredibly valuable antiques.
William D. Arand has a great idea for a rich science fiction universe. A superhero with the ability to manage and upgrade other superheroes is wonderful and bizarre. The superhero/supervillain archetypes mashed together into the same team without actually agreeing to work together makes for great conflict. This isn’t the first story where superheroes are outlawed, but it is uncommon enough that there’s plenty of freedom in how to set up and tell this kind of story.
The fundamental problem with the series is the character of Felix. He cannot be an active participant in his own story because he cannot do anything with his powers to improve himself. His ability is passive—changing what he owns to do more for him. His active role is analysis and planning rather than executing a plan. Even as he starts training his body and fighting skills as the books progress, he still has to rely on the more accomplished supers around him to carry the weight.
Of the three books in the series, the first has the most interesting story. We get to witness the rise of Legion, Felix’s own guild of superheroes and villains. He runs the guild as a corporate bureaucracy, with departments, managers, and contracts. His employees are all technically slaves, but he offers them a living wage, housing, and all kinds of security. The Guild of Heroes views Felix as a threat, turning one of the worst supers of all time into the most hated supervillain in the world.
The second book goes in a lot of different directions, some more successful than others. Felix has moved his operation to a new city, thereby freeing all of his slaves and re-signing them to employment contracts with Legion. He also decides to run for governor as a way to rubber-stamp all his new projects, like a university that trains students to work with Legion when they graduate. This brings on the ire of supervillain Skipper, owner of Skipper City, who starts doing everything she can to destroy Felix. There’s also a subplot with Legion expansions into another country and even another planet, which only exist to set up the third book. There are gods, as well, who have physical forms in this universe. The third book is driven by exposition and motifs, not a direct throughline in the novel.
The third book goes full fantasy. Felix is suddenly surrounded by elves, dryads, and dragons after discovering an alternate dimension run by his half-brother. The base of operations is now in the foreign country, which is suddenly very interested in legally discrediting and dismantling Legion. The other planet is still in play, though it’s an aspirational community being developed. Basically, the third book mashes up high fantasy with superheroes and throws the rules out the window for both genres. The gods are back and also hate Felix, so his power is blocked on a recurring cycle to stop him from gaining more influence. The third book has a lot of plot threads that don’t really get explored as fully as they could be.
The slavery element of the narrative sets some very uncomfortable content area right at the top. The three female supers who Felix brings back to life are terrified that he will have his way with them. Felix says he is not interested in this, but it’s quite literally the start of their conscious relationship. It’s a recurring story element, with the new purchases all fearing the worst of Felix. Unsurprisingly, Felix does wind up in a romantic relationship with some of his slaves. They pursue him and ask for it to happen, but they are required to do anything he says. There are some awful consent issues at play in the novel and it dips into the same upsetting discussion again and again.
It’s not as big a deal in the second novel, but the third novel establishes the elves, dryads, and dragons as sex-driven creatures who release pheromones to make people sleep with them. It’s all so superfluous to the actual story of the novels and pushes an interesting character into Larry Stu territory. The subtext is Felix is so amazing that everyone wants to follow him or be with him. Anyone who meets him has some form of this reaction and it’s just unbelievable.
I do think the Super Sales on Super Heroes series has enough to offer to try out the first book. It’s not my favorite superhero story ever, but I enjoyed it enough to read through the three novels that have been released. The good outweighs the bad, and the creativity behind the universe is enough to sustain the story.
The Super Sales on Super Heroes books are available on Amazon.
