Almost everybody knows the story of Superman and the planet Krypton with its red sun. Everybody knows that Superman is the only son of Jor-El and Lara, who shipped him off to Earth moments before the planet Krypton was blown to smithereens. But Kevin J. Anderson's novel, The Last Days of Krypton, proves that there is much more to the story. And what a story it is!
From political shenanigans, to sibling rivalry, to the plots of the evil dictator Zod, to the mute villain Nam-Ek, to the true nature of Brainiac, to earthquakes and flash floods, Anderson's Krypton has to be one of the most unfortunate planets in the universe. And that's what makes this book so entertaining and flawed at the same time.
With straightforward prose and a quick pace, Anderson tells the story of Krypton in an exciting, never-lagging manner, with one disaster after another, while the endearing characters try to overcome those ordeals. The novel is full of adventure, romance, villains and action, which makes it an almost epic tale that sheds new light on the whole Superman mythos.
But in trying to combine all the different mythologies that have been created over the decades, Anderson also creates a novel that doesn't leave the reader room to breathe and suspend his/her disbelief. As Anderson crams his 400+ pages with disaster after disaster that the story becomes more of a space opera than anything else, which, of course, might have been Anderson's intention in the first place (the book begins with a list of all the characters in the novel - Dramatis Persoane - as if it were an opera or a play). And, also, the stilted dialogue surely doesn't help.
But, overall, the flaws don't take away from the fact that this is a hugely entertaining book, with enough imagination and forward momentum to make it an addictive read and a must for fans of The Man of Steel. And on the long run, it's probably going to become the final word on the story of Krypton.
Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2023.
Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of several short films and a feature, which was released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. He is also the host of The Dark Fantastic Podcast. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @DFantasticPodcast
