Publisher's Synopsis
Superheroes. Celebrities. Crazed Robots. Interdimensional Assassins. And a city where even the villains get a magazine shoot. Zephyr tells the story of a cynical, smart-mouthed superhero kicking ass in a world going mad around him. "I absolutely loved this book. The author is whip smart and dissects this genre like a surgeon" - Joe Gazzam, author of Uncaged The place is Atlantic City: a sweeping longitudinal metropolis rebuilt following widespread devastation in 1984. Superhumans are not only real, they're human. All too human, as Nietzsche would say. With his daughter getting into the business and his wife showing him the door, it's easy to wonder if Zephyr's life might be easier without his ever-growing powers and supervillains, extradimensional invasions and city-shaking calamities derailing his best efforts handling life in a celebrity-mad alternate universe where Manhattan's a mutant-infested ruin and the Beatles were a superhero team. If you love Alan Moore's Watchmen and other classics of the adult superhero genre, you'll love Zephyr because it's the freshest take yet. In Volume 5, Zephyr belatedly tracks down Loren aka Seeker to Atlantic City's grimy barrio and uncovers a sinister plot involving an addictive heroin-derivative that bestows super powers, inadvertently linked to Twilight's growing criminal empire. Meanwhile, masks across Atlantic City and the planet start dropping out of public life as British super Sting preaches spiritual Ascension in Afghanistan. Zephyr investigates as part of his search for the deadly and elusive Matrioshka, and as usual, finds more than he expects. Editorial reviews "It's a skilfully-written superhero fantasy resonant with emotion. Expect to feel your soul move as the swaggering narrator bears comic and often poignant witness to the vagaries of a life both bizarre and very like our own" --AA Attanasio, author of the Radix tetrad and The Dragon and the Unicorn series. "The book deconstructs the superhero in the most entertaining, cynical and interesting ways" --Michael Ivan Lowell, The Suns of Liberty series. "There are so many subtle yet brilliant liberties that Hately takes with reality that makes his world pop as a unique, fun, unpredictable sand box in which he hatches super human adventures on par with anything else on the market" --reader Greg McCubbin. "Here is a brutally honest look at a superhero for a mature reader. A darkly humorous look at the strains and excesses of a hero who is past his prime" --reader Keiran Jones. "I strongly recommend this book and can't wait to read the others in this inventive, entertaining series" --reader Mike Flota.
