Zephyr: Zephyr VII (Paperback)

<b>Superheroes. Celebrities. Crazed Robots. Interdimensional Assassins. And a city where even the villains get a magazine shoot.</b> Zephyr tells the story of a cynical, smart-mouthed superhero kicking ass in a world going mad around him. <i>"I absolutely loved this book. The author is whip smart and dissects this genre like a surgeon" </i> - Joe Gazzam, author of <i>Uncaged</i> The place is Atlantic City: a sweeping longitudinal metropolis rebuilt following widespread devastation in 1984. Superhumans are not only real, they're human. All too human, as Nietzsche would say. With his daughter getting into the business and his wife showing him the door, it's easy to wonder if Zephyr's life might be easier without his ever-growing powers and supervillains, extradimensional invasions and city-shaking calamities derailing his best efforts handling life in a celebrity-mad alternate universe where Manhattan's a mutant-infested ruin and the Beatles were a superhero team. <b>If you love Alan Moore's Watchmen and other classics of the adult superhero genre, you'll love Zephyr because it's the freshest take yet.</b> In Volume 7, Zephyr returns to his native parallel following the exploits of Zephyr V and VI, finding his arrival catapults him into the middle of a global media spin. Using his adventures offworld as a cheat guide to his home parallel throws up some unexpected consequences, and meanwhile there's the everyday business of saving Atlantic City if not the world from a moon-based machine invasion, and himself from an assassination attempt and the fallout from the unsolved murder of former teammate-turned-FBI agent Annie Black. Central to the changes rocking Zephyr's world are the decades-late return of his father, the parahuman resistance fighter Strummer, who triggers the reappearance of an old foe which finally brings the numerous threads in Zephyr's life to an epic and dramatic conclusion. <b>Editorial reviews</b> "It's a skilfully-written superhero fantasy resonant with emotion. Expect to feel your soul move as the swaggering narrator bears comic and often poignant witness to the vagaries of a life both bizarre and very like our own" <i>--AA Attanasio, author of the Radix tetrad and The Dragon and the Unicorn series.</i> "The book deconstructs the superhero in the most entertaining, cynical and interesting ways" <i>--Michael Ivan Lowell, The Suns of Liberty series.</i> "There are so many subtle yet brilliant liberties that Hately takes with reality that makes his world pop as a unique, fun, unpredictable sand box in which he hatches super human adventures on par with anything else on the market" <i>--reader Greg McCubbin.</i> "Here is a brutally honest look at a superhero for a mature reader. A darkly humorous look at the strains and excesses of a hero who is past his prime" <i>--reader Keiran Jones.</i> "I strongly recommend this book and can't wait to read the others in this inventive, entertaining series" <i>--reader Mike Flota.</i>