Title: Enemies & Allies Author: Kevin J. Anderson Year: 2009 Publisher: William Morrow Reviewer: Jake Beal Sometimes a book just really disappoints you, because there was so much potential in the concept, yet the author is either unwilling or unable to follow through. For me, Mr. Anderson's novel "Enemies & Allies" was such a book. The base concept is a classic: Batman and Superman begin their superhero careers and find themselves needing to team up. The hook is that it is set in the 1950s of American legend---with the Communist Menace sending Sputnik from abroad, McCarthyism at home, B-movies of monsters and aliens, and all the litany of societal change and prosperity and good ol' American values. Well and good so far, and promising the reader a fascinating take on an old tale through modern lenses---after all, the Batman/Superman team-up really was a stable trope throughout the silver age, just as it remains today. On the one hand, Mr. Anderson could have taken these classic stories and given them a contemporary treatment of depth, complexity of character, and moral ambiguity---not "dark and gritty," but just fully rounded characters. On the other hand, he might have embraced the trope and submerged us in the mythos, bidding us suspend disbelief and go back to our childhood fantasies. Alas, although he has tried for the second route, he has failed most miserably. The fundamental problem with "Enemies & Allies" is that Mr. Anderson really wants to be the reader and not the author. Submerging the readers in their childhood fantasies is a very difficult trick, requiring quite a bit of delicacy to pull off well. The problem is that, when we've grown up, we really do lose some of that ability for wonder that we had as children. There needn't be anything sad or cynical about it---it's just that we've seen more things and gotten more sophisticated in our understanding of the world. Put another way: it's much easier for a child to suspend disbelief because there are many fewer ways they can recognize inconsistencies. So to draw an adult into a child-like fantasy, you need to give a lot of cues about why it's OK to step away from their knowledge of the world---and most especially, when you're telling a fantastic story, you must scrupulously avoid any detail that is not necessary, for every detail is an invitation to a rupture of the bubble. Give the reader space to decide how to fill the gaps, let mysteries be mysteries, and above all focus on the things that brought us to the world: the characters, the sensations, the magic. Sometimes this is done brilliantly, as for example in the "Venture Brothers" cartoons, which freely mingles both childlike wonder and adult cynicism. The better licensed novels attain this as well---even now I still delight in the Mary Sue simplicity of the "Dreadnought" and "Battlestations" Star Trek novels. Mr. Anderson, though, lacks the touch. Most of "Enemies & Allies" reads like it was plotted and written by a teenager, showing off all the neat things that he's thought up without really exploring or fully developing any of them. For example, he loves to spout technical facts about Batman's equipment (ahead of its time and well behind ours) that bring just enough reality to threaten our suspension of disbelief. Worse, though, is when he has the things he wants to have happen go ahead and happen with too much detail to sweep under the carpet, yet no real in-universe justification. I think the epitome of this for me was when Batman comes off well against Lex Luthor in a confrontation, so suddenly all of Wayne Enterprises starts to outperform LutherCorp and come up with totally awesome new inventions ripped straight from yesterday's headlines. Because, you know, Batman totally kicked Lex's ass, so that makes Wayne Enterprises scientists smarter! Lots of things happen in the book---lots, and lots of things. Mr. Anderson seems to never be able to resist adding another 50s reference or side trip or info-dump about things that we all already know from the 50s mythos. Like when UFOs are brought up, and he needs to suddenly give us a paragraph of narrative recollection about Project Blue Book---not that gives us any particularly interesting or even relevant take on it, but that just rehashes a standard piece of the 50s mythos in a style so detached it could have been a Wikipedia entry. It's a classic case of telling rather than showing. All this plot seems to have crowded out the characters entirely. Superficially, they evince all the right emotions, but they seem to all be just walking through their assigned paces, tiredly making their way toward the assigned roles. Lois Lane, for example, is completely robbed of the process of falling in love with Superman. Of course we know she's going to end up in love with him---we want to watch how it happens and to relive the feelings and the tension as it resolves. Just being told about how he saved her life and now she's realizing she really truly loves him doesn't do a thing for us. Lois is reduced from one of the most noteworthy strong female figures of comics to a cardboard figure who has to use extra adjectives to try to convince us that she feels anything at all. In the end, I haven't read enough of Mr. Anderson's other works to judge whether this is typical of his writing or if it's just that he phoned this one in. It wouldn't even be too bad a book to read if one were a small child. I'm afraid that in my final judgement, however, I would not recommend this book to anybody who wants to see anything other than an uninspired rendering of a couple of superheros kicking ass.