by Bob Proehl

Titan, out 25 September

A group of people with extraordinary abilities face discrimination and bigotry.

If you’ve not read any of The X-Men comics, or indeed seen any of the films featuring Magneto – notably the first film, First Class, or Days of Future Past – then The Nobody People may well come across as an insightful way of looking at the problems with bigotry and discrimination, with the “abilities” that the protagonists have metaphors for other issues. (Although in this case, many of those with abilities are also people affected by those issues, whether of race, gender or equality.) It’s a long book, the first of a duology according to online sources, and takes its time establishing the central characters while introducing a host of subsidiaries.

Trouble is, most people reading this site – and who would be attracted to this sort of book – will at the very least have seen those movies; they may have read the comics at various points in its near 60-year run; or they may even have read some of the novels that Titan have been (re)printing in recent times. And I’m afraid to say that Stan Lee, in the original series, and Chris Claremont (whose run I’m most familiar with of the new X-Men writers since 1974) have covered this ground. In detail, and better. It’s not enough to say in the afterword that it owes an obvious debt – the book needs to say something different, and it doesn’t. You’ll reach certain points and groan because the similarities aren’t just vague, but pretty much note for note.

If Proehl had written a gripping tale that had such a debt, you’d be more tempted to forgive it, but the book rambles, and by the end I had the feeling of flitting encounters with dozens of characters but few with any depth. It becomes clear around the halfway point the direction the book has to go – and Proehl sadly doesn’t surprise.

Verdict: A rambling take on the X-Men with the serial numbers ever so gently rubbed off. 4/10

Paul Simpson