Flypaper Boy: Coming of Age by Philip "Norvaljoe" Carroll
What do you do with the world's lamest superpower? For starters, you end your first mission getting kidnapped by the bad guys who are determined to brainwash and blackmail you into becoming their next pet supervillain. They're going to provide you with all the training you need, teach you to fight properly, put you through a strength-building regiment fit for the special forces. Not to mention the company of a beautiful girl who makes you the sole object of her attentions. When you're 16, you figure you can handle it. Nothing they can do will prevent you from being a hero.When it turns out they want you to kidnap the teenage daughter of an Eastern European communist leader. It's for her own good, and it will help rescue the entire country. When it's put that way, it doesn't seem like the bad guys are quite so bad.
Flypaper Boy nails the title dead on. This is a coming of age story for Jimmy in many different ways. He's a teenager learning what it means to be an adult. He's an agent in training learning what it costs to enter a world of deception. He's a kid with a superpower learning that power doesn't automatically make him a hero. Most importantly, he's a young man learning that compromise begins with the words "That's not so bad," and ends with a cost that can never be recovered.
At the end of the day, compromise is what this story is really all about. What are you prepared to give up for what is right? What are you prepared to suffer? What are you prepared to let others suffer? And what are you ready to do to someone else if it's for their own good? Those can be some scary questions, and most of us will never have to face the answers in any tangible form, much less confront them as directly as does Jimmy.
The overall lesson, of course, is that powers don't make a hero. A hero is made by the strength of their spirit, the consistency of their discipline, and their willingness to pursue what is right. These are the proper and weighty elements of a coming-of-age story.
But's also a superhero story about a kid whose power is that he sticks to things - and can't get unstuck. For every moment of weighty angst, we get a scene of Jimmy unable to let go of a soda cup and worried the straw is going to stick to his lips. His world is out of his control in so many ways. Jimmy's coping mechanism is to journal his experience by turning his story into panels of comic art. It's a smooth and subtle reminder that he's not really as put together as he seems, and that this is, in-fact, a comic book novel.
Flypaper Boy: Coming of Age is a little sentimental, a little off the wall, a little idealistic, a little directionless, and more than a little bit thoughtful. It's a lot like a teenage boy, and it's all heart. If you're a fan of teen fiction, light-hearted superhero stories, or want a hero that doesn't have all the answers, this is for you.
All of Philip Carroll's fantasy, science-fiction, and supernatural romance can be found at norvaljoe.com.
