The Ultra-Violets: Middle Grade superheroines

[anthimeria]

It's no secret that I love superheroes beyond the telling of it.  I'll try anything if there's superheroes attached (well, almost anything.  It's an important caveat!).  So when I saw the shiny cover of a new middle grade book called The Ultra-Violets: The Fuchsia is Now, I may have jumped up and down.  A superhero book aimed at 8-12 girls?  Where it's okay to be girly and superpowered?  Where half of the cast-of-four are characters of color?  And everything is purple?

Eeee!

My spoiler-free review looks like this:

The Ultra-Violets: The Fuchisa is Now, by Sophie Bell, is what would happen if you took Lemony Snicket's writing style (and his habit of humorous inserts), mixed well with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and used it to write the origin story for a group of sixth-grade superheroes.  Iris, Cheri, Scarlet and Opal are reunited after four years apart, and after their first sleepover as renewed BFFs, they realize something very weird is going on: they have superpowers!  But weirder, creepier things are happening in SyncroniCity, and it's up to them to put a stop to it.  The Ultra-Violets is fast, fun, and viomazing. (Plus, the text is purple.  Really!)

For actual opinions, follow the cut.


The end result of these few paragraphs is, "I wished I liked it more."

It took too long, the prologue lasted forever, and everything's on the surface--sure, they're 11, but none of these girls think past the moment.  Except, of course, Opal, who (spoiler!) goes bad.  One of the things I love about superheroes is their motivation, their drive.  Why they decide to do this crazy thing.  And for the Ultra-Violets, their drive seems to be "Why not?"  Which I don't take particular exception to, except it means there's little motivation for their battles.  Especially the crowning battle at the end, where the group finally forms.  They fight to free the lab animals!  Because having animals in a lab is bad!  Without any of the group ever saying why that would be bad, or what's happening to the animals, or articulating it at all.  It's just assumed in the text, both textually and metatextually, that of course using animals for science is bad, and of course they should free them, and of course all these mutants are bad too!

Whatever your stance is on animal testing (or mutants, for that matter), I hope you've thought about it at all.  These girls haven't.

I did enjoy the geeky references ("Laugh it up, fuzzball" and "Yippy-ki-yay, my brothers" among them), though I felt like a lot of them would go right past the target audience.  Their superpowers--coloring/light manipulation, super-dancing, and math+animal communication--are interesting and used uniquely, which is something I really look for in superhero stories.  I am so tired of the usual trifecta of strength-invulnerability-flight.  And their powers are used in nonobvious ways, which is refreshing.

There's a very heavy narrator-voice, which others have likened to the Powerpuff Girls, and I think fans of that series will love this one.  But in my opinion, it's targeted directly at its age group, and unlike some middle grade, won't translate well to older readers.  Even superhero-loving me had to slog through some bits that I know will go over a lot better with nine-year-olds.

All in all, not great but not bad, either.  And anything that lets girls (and the publishing industry!) know they can be superheroes too is good in my book.

Comments

[sophronia_chaos]

Ooooooh, purple! Now I wish they weren't telling children that it's wrong to have lab animals. But still, sounds like there's a lot of good in this book!

[anthimeria]

Yeah, that's one among many reasons I wish I could've liked it more. On the one hand, girls and superheroes and purple! On the other, a somewhat bewildering cast and absolutely no thought into the long-term of anything. So a solid fifty-fifty rating. Not bad, but not great either.

Maybe the sequel will be better.