Miles Morales Suspended: A Spider-Man Novel

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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WHAT'S MILES MORALES SUSPENDED ABOUT?
In the shadow of his victory against The Warden (see Miles Morales for details), Miles finds himself the brunt of his History teacher's antagonism. Miles is sure it's a prejudice against him, his skin color, his background, or...any number of other things. There's a small chance it's just his teacher being a jerk. It's probably a combination of the two.

Regardless, Miles stands up for himself—and a few classmates have his back. And they end up serving an in-school suspension for it. The bulk of the novel focuses on that day—the doldrums of serving it, the homework assignments Miles has to try to focus on during the day, and all the ways his show more mind wanders through the day (his crush sitting in the desk behind him doesn't help him focus at all).

Little by little, however, Miles becomes aware of a threat to him and others present that day. And eventually, suspension or not, Miles' alter-ego has to step in and save the day.

THE NARRATION
We have Guy Lockard back from the first book and this time he's joined by Nile Bullock. I think the former handles the narration and the latter handles the parts of the book from Miles' POV. Feel free to correct me.

Both of these performers brought this to life—the narration is very in-your-face (as is fitting, also reminiscent of Stan Lee's voiceovers in various projects), and the characterization of Miles and the rest ring true.

I don't really have anything to say about the narration other than I would listen to these two (together or apart) narrate an audiobook anytime

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT MILES MORALES SUSPENDED?
There is very little plot to this (and not just because it's just shy of 4 hours in length). What's more, there's very little Spider-Man action. Both of these are actually good things—at least this time. What we do get is a lot of Miles Morales action, we see the young man behind the mask just trying to survive high school, make connections, and grow up. These are the aspects of the characters that have helped people connect with Peter Parker and Miles since the 60s.

Now, don't get me wrong—if this had all been Miles serving detention, it'd have been hard to put up with (not necessarily impossible). So I'm glad that Reynolds gave us a fun bit of Spider-Man action at the beginning and a pretty epic fight scene to wrap things up.

But that's not the heart of the book—nor is it the heart of the character. Reynolds understands what drives Spider-Man (whoever is behind the mask), particularly Miles. Although, I'd like to see him tackle Peter just for fun, too.

Including so much poetry took me aback initially (or, at least when I figured out that's what he was doing). But it fits Miles, it fits the girl he's trying to impress, it fits this world, the themes of this particular book...and Reynolds knows what he's doing in verse (unlike so many fantasy writers that litter their novels with questionable poetry). The same should be said for Lockard and Bullock—they know their way around reading verse so that it hits.

Is this the book I wanted and/or expected about Spider-Man or based on the previous novel by Reynolds? Nope. Do I care? Nope. Because it was fun, inventive, thought-provoking, and true to the character (yeah, a little heavy-handed, too—but that also sort of fits the classic Marvel modus operandi) . show less

Miles Morales might be Spider-Man, but he also has an in-school suspension. While there, one of his classmates starts bugging out -- literally.

This book picks up right where the previous novel ended. However, it does have a recap so any reader could grab this book and not feel lost. In fact, it did too much recapping in my opinion, with almost two-thirds of the book rehashing the material from the first novel.

Unlike the previous novel, this one was a mix of third-person prose and first-person poetry. This makes sense with Miles's newfound interest in poems, but I didn't quite like it. While I enjoy a good novel in verse, this jumping back and forth between the two was kind of jarring. Just when I was getting into the prose part, I was show more pulled out of the story to get a poem of MIles's feelings or thoughts about tangentially related things (sometimes more related than others). Every time I was starting to feel the poetry, bam -- we went back to the prose.

This feeling was amplified by having listened to the audiobook version. Guy Lockhard as the reader for the prose parts was once again phenomenal, and Nile Bullock as the voice of Miles reading his poetry also did really well. However, jumping back and forth between the two voices every few minutes just made me feel disconnected from the story.

At the end of the previous book, I was left wanting to know a little bit more about this universe, and particularly the main villain's backstory (i.e., how his powers worked). Although this book revisited a lot of what happened in the first title, nothing more was really explained. And then this book introduced other weird supernatural happenings in the last act, only to not really have that explained again. In fact, this book's ending left me feeling deeply unsatisfied that a story had just become to blossom and then it was already gone before anything real was said.

I really wanted to like this book after loving the first title, but it just didn't do it for me. show less

5*
Against banned books. A good book to read and discuss.