This unexpected novel takes familiar genres which it both celebrates and subverts. It's a an action novel that owes a lot to pow-zap comic books and computer games - sometimes in an clever self-referential way - but its characters are anything but two dimensional - they have depth and heart and history, and at the core of the story is very believable friendship. This was adventure mixed with martial arts mixed with horror mixed with paranormal. I liked computer-game feel as I watched a novice superhero learning martial arts, but I also loved the fact that these characters exist in a world where people have families and death matters - pretty rare in books which feature action and fighting. If you're an intelligent reader of action fics, or a lover of comicbook art, or just enjoy a good action adventure, then dive right in.