Today’s SPFBO review is brought to you by Hoopla! As audioholics Esme and I both were dismayed about, our entire slush pile this year only had one audiobook in it, and as it was more of a YA story on its exterior, it fell much more to my side of things than hers.
Well, I found it on hoopla (this is a feature of a lot of public libraries that has an absolute ton of audiobooks in it, for those not aware) and so, thank you public libraries!
Cato is the only true half-human, half-ghost hybrid in existence. He’s powerful and unique with two divine powers instead of one.
The United States government believes he is the key to developing a devastating weapon that will give humankind an advantage when war inevitably erupts between the Human Realm and Avilésor, the Ghost Realm.
After being an unwilling test subject in Project Alpha for two years, Cato and the rest of his “lab-family” survive a transport accident to find themselves stranded and powerless in the middle of the wilderness. Hunted every step of the way by ghostly Shadow Guards with supernatural abilities and human Agents desperate to recapture their prisoners, the eight young fugitives are drawn to Cato’s hometown where the Rip between Realms connects the worlds.
Cato wants nothing to do with his past, but as his enemies close in, he realizes he’s willing to do anything to protect his lab-family . . .
. . . even kidnap the daughter of a ghost hunter and make a dangerous deal to become a mercenary.
A Fallen Hero is the story of Cato. He is at the beginning of this novel I think 16 years old or so, and he is a ghost hunter, who is secretly half human and half ghost because of some sort of accident that happened. His secret is found out and he is arrested by the US government and kept in a lab and experimented on for two years, until he and his ‘lab-family’ are being transported from one lab to another and there is a devastating crash and they all escape.
Ghosts have various powers depending on what kind they are, but most common is that they can become invisible and walk through walls, which is probably why they are called ‘ghosts’, which is a bit of a misnomer, because they are not spirits of the dead. They can be touched, seen, and most importantly in this world, killed. There are ghosts with passive powers, like mind reading, or active powers, like telekinesis. People who can change from animal form to human form are also considered ghosts, so there are werewolves in this world as well.
Cato’s home town is the site of the world’s only known permanent rip in space time that connects the two worlds, our world, and Avilésor, the ghost realm. As such, Cato and his lab family seem to be pulled towards it more than anywhere else, which is a bit problematic since that is where the agents who captured them are looking for them, but it is also where the most ghost hunters live. When the two youngest members of their lab-family become seriously ill, the only thing they can think to do is kidnap the daughter of the lead ghost hunter and ransom her for medical treatment. Shenanigans ensue!
I enjoyed this book more than I think I expected when I read the synopsis. Perhaps I wasn’t feeling in the mood for a YA paranormal fantasy at that particular time, but the d10 hath spoken and so off I went.
This was definitely a unique take on ghost stories, to be sure. It reads a bit like an offshoot of the unwilling test subject or breeding program trope, where we don’t see these kids so much as the prisoners in their day to day habitat, but much more so the aftermath of having lived that way on them.
Cato and the others are missing much of their memories because of the way they experimented on these kid’s brains, so when they first find themselves in the outdoors, some of them have literally never experienced it, while others just don’t remember. Two of the kids who were born and raised in the lab literally don’t know the words tree, or clouds, or rain. This admittedly made my eyes roll a bit, because while it makes sense that they don’t have any real world experience of a tree or a cloud, having never seen them, knowing that these kids are genius hackers and computer programmers means they know, at least in the context of computer science, the word ‘tree’ or ‘cloud’. Having them stumble over the words like they are completely foreign didn’t make a great deal of sense, but I did understand the intent.
This may be a minor quibble, but because it happened right near the start of this book it got wormed into my head as something that was going to bother me, and that such things were going to keep on happening. It pulled me out of the story and I worried that it was going to keep on happening. Thankfully it didn’t.
I liked Cato as a character and rooted for him to win the day. The book ended in… not a cliffhanger, but it left the story open for more (this is the first in a series after all). It didn’t reach the exact ending I wanted for Cato, but it did end in a way that I wasn’t mad about it. I may just pick up the next book to see if what I wanted to happen did.
This one had two narrators, A.J. Shuck and Mia Hutchinson-Shaw. Both did a great job bringing the story to life for me. This book is told partially in the first person from Cato’s point of view, and partially in the third person with everyone else, so occasionally, the point of view would change, but not always the narrator. Thankfully, it was narrated in a way where that was never confusing. The characters all sounded like those characters would have sounded in my head, and so good job to the narrators on this one!
All told, I had 8/10 stars of a good time with A Fallen Hero. It was certainly unique and engaging and those are two of my most favorite things to find in a SPFBO book!
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