Will super villains be on the final? (edition 2011)

Sixteen year old Leah Taymore has gotten an early admission to Liberty Vocational. Liberty is a university where students with superpowers learn to become heroes. Leah has the ability to manipulate atoms. Right from the start things go terribly wrong for Leah. Leah doesn't know that she is being sabotaged as part of a supervillains plan to have the best future heroes fail.
The illustrations - like the majority of manga aimed at a primarily female audience - are cute. Sadly they're only in black and white.
When I saw this in the book store I bought it based on my love of Novik's Temeraire series. It was good - the story was well written and I really liked the characters of Leah and her empath roommate, Yuzana. I'm not sure I'd buy the rest of the series but if I saw them in the library I would check them out. ( )

Leah's parents are thrilled when she's accepted to Liberty Vocational, a prestigious college for young superheroes. Unfortunately as soon as the school year begins, everything starts going wrong.

I picked it up because I like Naomi Novik, not because I'm especially interested in superheroes or manga. It's a cute story with cute characters and cute art (manga really isn't my favorite style). I'll read the other books in the series if I run across them, but I won't go out of my way. ( )

This, the first installment in a manga-style superhero comic series, was cute. And that's about all I can say. I like the clean art; even though black and white manga never gives me the visual satisfaction of a full color graphic novel, I think the youth of the characters -- students in a superhero prep school -- and their quirks are conveyed well. As for the story, it too is... cute. Our main character, a potential "big gun" superhero with awesome powers, has a VERY awkward first day, in which she causes chaos, property damage, and -- even worse -- reputation damage, all while developing crushes on both students and a teacher. There is, naturally, a conspiratorial plot against this young woman, the first steps of which are revealed, along with the identity of the (we assume) primary villain.

The story was interesting enough and the characters appealing enough for me to read the next couple of installments (if they are available) to see how it all unfolds, but I don't expect that I will be investing heavily unless subsequent volumes start to showcase Naomi Novik's more vivid writing talents. This was neither mind-blowingly awesome, nor mind-numbingly dull, but a good little 30-minute entertainment. (Did I mention it was short?) ( )

As my devoted readers undoubtedly know, I have yet to do anything but bounce hard off of the standard manga conventions of representing faces, especially what happens when a character is embarrassed or angry. So I was reading for content: girl with potentially awesome powers that are not yet under control enrolls at superhero school, makes friends, has enemies, moons over love interest. It was cute, and I liked that her hidden nemesis might end up conflicted not because she’s his love interest but for other reasons, but I need more to make up my mind. ( )

Liberty Vocational is not your typical college. Why, you ask? Because it is where young superheroes go to learn how to use their powers to the best of their abilities. Leah Taymore has just started at Liberty Vocational, but her biggest challenge isn't learning how to use her extraordinary atom manipulation powers without causing a catastrophe, it's learning how to get through the day without causing a catastrophe just on her own. Add in to the mix cute boys, an adviser who may not want to advise her and a dean who may be out to get her, and Leah doesn't always have the best days. Then there's Bane. A supervillain of some notoriety who has infiltrated Liberty Vocational with some secret agenda all his own...

Will Supervillains Be on the Final? is cute. Compared to Novik's Termeraire series, it seems to fall a little short for me, but that may be more of the fact that I don't think I'm entirely the target audience, but I can appreciate it for what it is. You can tell that Novik is having fun with her characters and their situations. Leah's goofiness fits her well as she tries to navigate through a life that is entirely new to her. The supporting cast can sometimes be a little over the top, but that's really the point. The book is done in a manga fashion (which lends itself very well to this story), so in my limited manga-reading experience this seems to be true to how they are written, so manga fans should really enjoy this. Yishan Li's art is crisp and clean, and easy to follow throughout most of the book. Novik's Temeraire fans (more the girls than the guys, although the questions of the morality of superheroics might prove to be interesting to the male set, too) should probably give this a try as well, just to see how Novik can stretch her writing muscles.

Nothing challenging here, but something fun all the same. ( )