The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune - A Review

Someone is back, take a wild guess at who… I’ll give you a hint – it’s someone whose name begins with ‘m’ and ends in ‘e’. That’s right! It’s my old boss, Michelle. Jk Kimora, it’s me. Although saying that, that makes it seem like my name is ‘me’ and not ‘Matthew’… Anyway, I’m back – you’re welcome.

            Now, as I write this, I haven’t decided whether this is going to be a full review, or more of just a casual one. I sort of just wanted to talk through the thoughts I had and how I felt after reading The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune. And, to give you all a TL:DR, it was positive. I felt positively, I was, and am, a fan of the book. I will summarise my thoughts on the book with a singular gif before elaborating.

                 Also, this ramble/review doesn't contain plot spoilers, so, if you've not read the book yet, I'm not spoiling anything for you.

            The Extraordinaries follows sixteen-year-old Nick Bell, one of the premier fanfiction writers within a fandom dedicated to real-life superhero, or Extraordinary, Shadow Star. Oh, this world has people with superpowers – The Extraordinaries, by the way, kind of a big thing that would have been bad to not mention. But the book follows Nick Bell as he tries to become an Extraordinary himself.

            The becoming the Extraordinary isn’t what I want to talk about, I want to mention how much I liked the fact that the protagonist was just a normal kid in a world of people with superpowers. I feel like when it comes to superheroes and superpowers, writers often gravitate to creating their own heroes with tragic backstories without thinking of the rest of the world around them. This isn’t a criticism on those other writers, far from that, my point is just that it’s refreshing to see a superhero story that isn’t necessarily about the hero themselves. It’s a new perspective, and it’s one I was happy to see. I was especially happy when the perspective comes from that of a fanfiction writer – this person who idolises one of the Extraordinaries.

            If I did have one small gripe, it would be Nick's fanfiction. I wanted more of it. Since the book is a little under four-hundred pages, I felt like a few more chapters of Nick’s fanfiction could have been included as the story of the book went along. It could have been where the vibe of his fanfiction mirrored how he was feeling about the world around him. That's literally it. That's my only negative. I just wanted more – because I'm a greedy bitch who wanted more fandom mess.

            I loved Nick as a protagonist. He has ADHD, and there are parts of the story where Nick’s train of though ends up running so far off the rails of what he is meant to be focusing on in the moment, that we suddenly find that he’s in a new place, like he hasn’t even been able to focus on the fact he’s been travelling. He also has the habit of just managing to talk for so long. There’s this one bit of the book I picked out that I really liked. (It was around chapter three, I think, I forgot to write a page number.)

            ‘“I assume you’re all aware of the latest Shadow Star news.”

            Everyone groaned.

            Nick was used to it.’

            I absolutely loved this bit. These three sentences told me just how annoying Nick was as a character. But I don’t mean this in a bad way. I mean this in the, he has this obsession, and his friends are going to hear about it whether they want to or not, kind of way. And, to repeat myself, I loved this, because I know people that are like this. One of my best friends is like this, she’s told me things about things (great choice of terminology, I know) I’ve had no knowledge of, or interest in, and now thanks to her, I know far more about certain fandoms than I should for someone who hasn’t even stepped foot in them. I love it when she tells me about them, because she does it with such passion. And Nick has this exact same passion.

            Now, I realise that was a bit of a tangent, but I wanted to mention it because it just meant that Nick, as a character, felt real. And that’s one of the things I loved about the book as a whole. It felt real. Its world felt real. Like, you know how sometimes you’ll read something, and, for lack of a better comparison, its world will feel like The Sims 4.

I know that’s a strange thing to say but bear with me. In The Sims 4, there are a bunch of areas that you can travel to (for reference, places like Windenburg and San Myshuno), and you can see other areas from an area you go into, but often, those areas aren’t connected, and because of that the worlds in The Sims 4 often feel weird and disjointed. I get like that with books sometimes, sure we go places, but none of the places seem interconnected so it’s just like we hop around random locations in the same universe.

            With The Extraordinaries however, I didn’t feel that. I didn’t feel The Sims 4 world in it. The world that Klune created for his book feels real, it all feels interconnected. It feels like I could go there and be able to travel around, because there are things happening outside of Nick Bell’s world that he notices, he travels around Nova City, we see his friends’ houses – there’s more to the world than just his world.

            To circle back to Nick for a second, there was a section, about seventy pages in that gave me, perhaps, the single worst case of second-hand embarrassment I have ever felt. Nick finds himself alongside one of his friends, Gibby, in a dark alley, and after almost getting mugged, he meets Shadow Star. Given that its established pretty early that Nick has a huge crush on Shadow Star, and given Nick is an awkward sixteen-year-old, I felt like I was watching a train slowly come off the tracks and careening towards a fiery demise. And for as embarrassing as it was, it didn’t want it to stop. I think Nick Bell may be up there as one of my favourite characters I’ve ever read.

            So… that was this. Again, I’m not sure whether I want this to be an actual review review, or just like a ramble of my thoughts. As I’ve been writing it, I have been thinking that this might just be my style for reviewing.

            Anyway, if you’ve read this far, thank you.

If, for whatever reason TJ Klune has found this, thank you for writing The Extraordinaries. Thank you for writing a character that made me feel so many things, whether I wanted to or not. I majorly enjoyed the book, and I can, with confidence, say that it’s one of my favourite books I’ve read this year.

            Okay, bye!

(Also, I didn't intend for this to be posted a week after my inaugural post. I don't have a schedule or anything, it just kind of worked out that way.)