I was reluctant to read this book because I thought it was about comic books. But it's not. It's about finding a path in the world, and the way humans aren't superheroes. They're young people looking to get ahead and to deal with the things they carry - mothers, survivor guilt, sexual ambiguity. Technically, the book emulates the comic-book form in fascinating ways: dilating time or stretching it out, zooming in and out of space. After an accelerating pace in the third part, the fourth part was this odd interlude, followed by a fifth part that brought everything back together. This was the best novel I've read in a while.