Ex-Patriots: A Novel (Ex-Heroes)

Ex-Patriots is a hard book to fully review without giving away the plot as what makes the book so good is the myriad of plot elements that the author teases and then skillfully brings together in the second half of the book. I'll steer clear of anything that might give any of that away. Basic summary (spoiler free) The Mount is recovering from the Siege and the populace is learning to live again. Resources are becoming scarce and the Mount must organize expeditions to increasingly remote areas for supplies. During one such expedition contact is made with elements of the U.S military. The Heroes are cautiously optimistic that this is the development they've been hoping for and their long isolation may be finally at an end. Of course, not everything is as it seems and it falls once again to the Mount's Heroes, Zapp, Cerberus, St. George, and Stealth to separate friend from foe and save not just themselves, but their new allies as well. The dialog between the Heroes is relaxed, natural, and what you'd expect of people who have become close friends and allies. Sufficient page time is given in just the right amounts and at the right times to flesh out the new Heroes and Villains. But Clines doesn't neglect to also develop the returning Heroes from the first book. Barry, aka Zappp, is hysterically funny and irreverent ("Do you want me to blast him?") and gets the 'screen time' he missed in the first book. Stealth, whose martial and mental prowess is only hinted at in Ex-Humans, is given many opportunities to show that not only does she miss absolutely nothing, she is a force to be reckoned with not just by humans but by meta-humans as well. Danielle Morris, aka Cerberus, shows more of her flawed human side but becomes more than just The Woman in the Suit. Along the way, she discovers that the woman makes the clothes (or armored exoskeleton, as the case may be.) Finally, St. George has matured as well, both psychologically and physically. He is a man of conviction and principles and puts deeds to words - as much as that puts a monumental crimp in his love life. I have to give props to Peter Clines for the manner in which he presented the plot twists in the novel. By my score, there were two major and two minor-to-medium plot twists by the end of the novel and I only correctly identified one of them before it happened. That's despite the author very carefully doling out the clues that, in hindsight, should have been blindingly obvious but were sufficiently subtle that they seemed organic to the story and not simply flashing neon plot signs. There is also what I think is a very specific teaser for book three, Ex-Communication, in this book. The author alludes to it at least twice but is very careful to dance around it and not give the game away too soon. Peter Clines has a history in Hollywood and he has obviously learned the first rule of show business: "Always leave them wanting more." I can't wait for Ex-Communication and the opportunity to rejoin our Heroes of the Mount and find out where he's going to go with this.

This book does the series justice. Its a big slow for the first half. But thats how this author works. All these books will be slow to start, while hes setting up all these different plot loops and trying to make the antagonist actually feel like they have existed in this world a while (rather than my petpeeve of just randomly popping up with a bad guy like its a crappy TV-Drama instead of a book.) The characters are developed. You will know whos important in the story and who is not. The only suggestion to the author would be to not focus so much time on the "THEN" chapters. Its great to know what happened. but sometimes these are placed randomly in the book with no relevance for another 2 chapters after. Also that these "THEN" chapters can drag on for a while. I want to know the past. I dont need a history lesson on why there are super soldiers. I get the concept.

Ex-Patriots by Peter Clines is book two in the Ex-Heroes series, and continues the series on the excellent note which it began. If anything, it is better than the first book, because the characters gain more depth and thus become more sympathetic and human (the heroes were, after all, human to begin with). If you are not familiar with the Ex-Heroes series, it is a surprisingly good post-apocalyptic series. Surprising, because the plot in essence is superheroes v. zombies, which quite honestly sounds too comic-booky to be a good story. However, the author does a beautiful job of making the story & characters plausible. The superheroes are all normal people who have changed genetically in some way, but they retain their essential humanness; certainly, they have human failings, desires, convictions, and emotions. The bulk of them have dedicated their lives to helping out normal humans, and when a plague causes things to go horribly wrong, the superheroes lay their lives on the line to protect what's left of the human race. Ex-Patriots continues a bit after Ex-Heroes concluded. The inhabitants of the Mount set of fireworks to celebrate their increasing safety & stability, despite the hordes of zombies which surround them. The fireworks draw the attention of another group of survivors....and our heroes need to work out whether this is a good or bad thing. As with Ex-Heroes, the bulk of the story occurs in the present, with the back story occurring in the form of "then" chapters interspersed within the "now" chapters. All in all, a very good, entertaining read.

I absolutely loved Ex-Heroes, the genre-blending book by Peter Clines. Here, the pace noticeably picks up with Ex-Patriots. To sum up the story from the first book, superheroes made a too-brief appearance in the world before it was decimated by a virus that turned humans into the walking dead. It's been almost two years since the outbreak, and the few superheroes left have established a safe zone in Los Angeles where they managed to get together a little over 20,000 survivors. While constantly fighting off the hordes of "ex-humans", they lead scavenging runs to try to find more supplies and, hopefully, survivors. This story picks up when an army drone finds St. George (the superstrong hero with an unerring moral compass) and the scavangers, during one of their runs. One of the Army bases has survived, it holds a troop of enhanced soldiers, and the survivors try to decide if they can trust a heavily-armed troop that wishes to place them under martial law. After all, they've survived all this time and there doesn't seem to be a government left where martial law could be put into effect. Soon enough though, we discover that all is not as it seems with these soldiers. The characters are flawless. They come to life and feel three-dimensional and real. The plot races along. The writing style engages your senses, and everything is well thought out and executed. It's a wonderful blend of zombies and supermen, while never feeling like an exploitation of either genre. Being the second book in the series, the first one, Ex-Heroes, should really be read first. While this is a stand-alone story, it's enriched by the backstory that's established in the first book. I have to say that this has become one of my favorite series to date.

Summary: Slightly better than the first book because of it's a deep plot but this book doesn't focus on the heroes as much as the first book. Pros: 1. Ex-Patriots, unlike Ex-Heros, has a solid interesting plot behind it. Ex-Heros was just superhumans beating up zombies...and nothing deep until the last quarter of the book. But the entirety of this book had a solid plot with unpredictable twists and turns. 2. This book introduces characters that are almost as interesting as the Heroes with various complex personalities and moral compasses...just like the heroes. 3. It's nice to see the Heroes struggle a bit....sure it's cool to see Superman kicking butt but it's also cool to see him face an obstacle that takes everything he has in him to defeat it. We get to see that a bit more in this book. Con: 1. The book makes the same mistake an anime I watched recently (one punch man 2) makes. It focuses on the new characters a tad bit too much, particularly when it comes to the various flashbacks presented in this book. ANd since like with ex-heroes flashbacks make almost half the book...that in itself was enough for me not to give this book a full-on 5-star rating. 1A. the other problem I had with this approach is that there are still a lot of questions that have yet to be answered about the current heroes in the book, and the heroes that died off. Moreover, the flashbacks from book 1 that focused on the various heroes allowed us to see the flaws, history, and experiences that shaped who each of the heroes became. Maybe this is addressed in the third book....but we will see. 2. If I was older....maybe I would appreciate the various pop-culture reference jokes....but since I'm young I couldn't enjoy them as much. I didn't deduct points for this though cause it's subjective but yeah just a con for me.

The world of e-books has made book-buying gratification so much more convenient. I had just finished reading "Ex-Heroes" by Peter Clines, and liked it enough that I wanted to read the sequel, "Ex-Patriots", so I bought a copy for my Kindle. I went from want, bought, downloaded, and to reading within five minutes. :-) So, here is my (non-spoilers) review for "Ex-Patriots". In "Ex-Patriots", as in "Ex-Heroes", a small band of superheroes protect a remnant of humanity from zombies in Los Angeles, California. Salvation appears to be at hand when a military detachment from Yuma Arizona makes contact with this enclave of survivors. As I wrote in my review for "Ex-Heroes", it sounds like the book could be cheesey, it's actually a smartly-written novel that is as much a character study as an urban fantasy action novel. You meet most of the major characters in the book in "then" and "now" chapters that flesh out their backstory, but most of the book revolves around the superhero formerly known as the Mighty Dragon and now known as St George. As its predecessor, "Ex-Patriots" has well developed characters, humor, pathos, and is an interesting blend of several genres. However, you need to read "Ex-Heroes" before reading this book, as many of the storylines are carried over from the earlier book into this one. Highly recommended. Five stars.

When it comes to writing fiction, Peter Clines is an abstract artist. A brand new author who dares to defy the conventional in order to find his own unique style of writing. His debut Ex-Heroes was anything but ordinary, it combined the traditional zombie splatter-fest with superhero fiction, it was the kind of story you'd expect to come from a graphic novel. No, it technically wasn't original, but Clines was the first I've seen to truly do the concept justice, and now he's back with a sequel, Ex-Patriots. Despite some missteps, fans of Ex-Heroes should be satisfied. With communication established with a U.S. Army, it would seem it's time for the superheroes to hang up their coats and let them take over as the guardians of Los Angeles's survivors, yet appearances can be deceiving. The creation of super-soldiers is merely the beginning, what's really going on at Project Krypton? Can the United States Army be trusted? And are they the real enemy? A personal criticism I had for Ex-Heroes was its run-of-the-mill storyline. It found its own identity towards the latter half, but for the most part Ex-Heroes was a very strong character driven story instead of a plot-driven one. Ex-Patriots on the other hand doesn't suffer from a typical zombie apocalypse plot that you've probably already seen a million times already. The story this time is definitely strong enough to stand on its own without the added awesome factor of superheroes fighting zombies. That being said, there's a bizarre story-arc that's completely dropped without giving any further exposition or closure. The book's synopsis describes the inhabitants of the Mount growing irrationally dissatisfied with living under the heroes' leadership. There are a mere two scenes that correlate with this plot-thread, then it's unceremoniously dropped, making the whole thing amount to nothing. Why this was on the book's synopsis, let alone in the book is beyond me. An opportunity that I felt Clines didn't quite nail in the last book was showing the decline of moral codes in the individual heroes. It's a characteristic from the zombie genre that would have had an interesting effect on superheroes. It would have tied the two genres ever closer and given the title Ex-Heroes a deeper meaning. In Ex-Patriots, Clines instead uses the U.S. Army to demonstrate a collapse in proper ethics. Despite several satirical diatribes made about the cliché nature of the plot, it does eventually divert its course in an interesting new direction that I doubt anyone will see coming. The key aspects which made Ex-Heroes so incredible was its insane premise and its believably flawed characters. Each individual superhero was so well characterized that it easily saved the book from an average storyline. Ex-Patriots seems to be the opposite from its predecessor, forgoing the incredibly strong characterization for a better plot. It's an interesting gamble that I don't think was for the better. Each of the heroes was previously characterized in a very peculiar fashion, through personal flashback "THEN" chapters from the viewpoint of their first-person perspectives. It was a unique method of storytelling that worked beautifully. It really fleshed out each of the superheroes' personas, origins, and experiences as crime fighters. By the end, each hero was well characterized and really melded together as a team. The format returns for Ex-Patriots but it isn't as well utilized this time. The various super-soldiers and military personal in which the flashbacks elaborate upon simply aren't very interesting. St. George and the other heroes stole the show in the last book, these other characters simply pale in comparison. Their personalities range from bratty, rude, to insufferably annoying; a certain flashback probably broke a record for the most dropped F-Bombs and use of vulgar insults at female promiscuity. The problem with the flashbacks focusing on the military personal is that the original superheroes feel less developed than in the first book. They each feel like caricatures for superhero archetypes rather than the flawed human beings which Clines did an excellent job illustrating. This doesn't mean they're any less interesting, I still tipped my hat at St. George's honor, held my sides laughing at Zzzap's pop-culture references, and marveled at Stealth's cunning superhuman sense of analysis. Danielle a.k.a Cerberus was the only character to undergo any development or retain her original flawed nature. Clines also needs to seriously reconsider how he implements minor characters into his narrative. Offering nothing more than an anonymous group of names isn't giving the reader characterization or any reason to be concerned for their safety. I couldn't even tell that the character Billy was a woman at first. A few new hero characters are introduced, though one of them works better than the others. The first is The Driver; a wily kid from the disbanded Seventeens simply looking to do some good with his powers. He's a welcome addition, though his introduction is a very obvious set up for a deus ex machina. The second new addition is Captain Freedom, whose characterization is absolutely all over the place and frankly isn't very interesting. One moment he's a no-holds brawler who punches first and asks questions later, then he's an honorable pacifist who only uses force when necessary. Like the rest of the super-soldiers he's very generic and pales in comparison to the other superheroes. I can see him becoming more interesting in the third novel if the ending is any indication, but for the majority of the book I didn't care much for him. My critiques may give off the impression that I dislike this book but that simply isn't the case, this is a book that absolutely needs to be read. Like Ex-Heroes, there simply isn't anything quite like it. I'll say it again, Peter Clines is an artist who defies nearly all contemporary guidelines in order to find his own unique style. We need to reward daring people like this who are passionate about following their own direction, even if it may or may not catch on. He didn't dumb-down his vision for a wider audience, he stuck to his guns and has earned my respect for it. Oh lest we forget Peter Clines's delightfully dark sense of humor. He's created a very interesting balancing act between illustrating an entertaining story with large stakes, while at the same time not taking itself completely seriously, even going as far as to parody its own ludicrous premise. The infamous "dead celebrity" running gag from Ex-Heroes returns, along with cynical jabs at overused cliches, and several pop-culture references. A particular Transformers joke had me cracking up with laughter. It lightens the mood considerably from what would otherwise have been a very downtrodden and morose atmosphere. It's the sign of an author who truly has fun as a writer. Ex-Patriots isn't quite as good as Ex-Heroes, but it's still a one of kind experience that can't be found anywhere else. The flashbacks weren't as compelling this time due to their focus on less interesting characters, I would have preferred more attention being paid to the original characters while seamlessly implementing the new ones. But this misstep doesn't stop Ex-Patriots from being something truly special. It's a uniquely realized homage to zombies, superheroes, mad science, and pop-culture all wrapped up with a deviously twisted sense of humor. How could you go wrong with that?

Sequels often scare me. In my opinion, many sequels are not as good as the first. And in some cases (see the movies Highlander and Highlander 2), the sequel is just horrible. But there are those instances where the sequel is as good or maybe even slightly better than the original (A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back). In this instance, the sequel is every bit as good as the original. I loved the first book and have recommended it to many folks. And with the sequel, I will recommend it as well! I think the characters are just awesome! I love to hear Barry's pop culture references. I had such a blast reading this book. I do want to give you a warning though. I started reading this during the middle of a work week. I had to force myself to stop reading or I would have stayed up all night and been useless at work the next day. I recommend reading it when you have lots of time. Thanks for another awesome entry in the Ex book series! Can't wait for the next one!!