The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune

Publication date: July 2020
LGBTQ+ author? Queer
Series: Extraordinaries Book #1
Setting: Nova City

Nick Bell is a queer teen with ADHD who writes fan fiction about the real-life superheroes, the Extraordinaries. Shadow Star is the hero saves Nova City from the destruction caused by Pyro Storm.

Nick has a huge crush on Shadow Star and wants to become an Extraordinary to get closer to him. Meanwhile, Nick’s best friend Seth seems to be pulling away from him and he doesn’t know why.

This story relies heavily on dramatic irony to build suspense. It worked for me at first, for the first few hours of the audiobook. But as it becomes increasingly clear who Shadow Star and Pyro Storm are to us and everyone in the book besides Nick, my patience started to wear thin. Like a lot of TJ Klune books, I wanted it to move along already!

Positive Portrayal of Police

Nick’s father is a police officer, and he adores his father. This results in a story that is uncomplicatedly glowing about the police as told through the eyes of a 16-year-old boy. This book was published in the summer of 2020, so it unsurprisingly was met with backlash.

What bothered me the most is that Nick got arrested by his dad’s friends and co-workers for doing something I do all the time, swimming in a river. Later the same police officers took Nick into their home and took care of him when his father temporarily wasn’t able to. How scary for Nick. Arresting kids for mistakes isn’t a good way to teach them a lesson or a funny story we all get over. It’s messed up.

I think objectively the worst part is that Nick’s father was violent towards a witness. Instead of this being treated as a crime, he was allowed to continue to work. We hear mostly about how this was hard on his father as the book is told from Nick’s perspective. This is difficult to read.

I noticed that TJ Klune posted an explanation and sort of apology on his website shortly after the book was published. Since superheroes and police have complicated relationships, he thought it would be interesting to put Nick in the middle. And the book was written in 2018 before the reckoning of 2020. But he acknowledges that Black Lives Matter has been going on since 2013 and takes responsibility for what he wrote.

He clarifies, “And in case you need to know what side that is, I’m the author and these are my words: I do not condone police violence, and I fully support defunding the police.”

Klune promises to fix the issues in the next book in the series, but I am probably going to pass on them.

Audiobook Narration

The book is narrated by Michael Lesley, who did an outstanding performance. I think this is what kept me going with the book. His voices for the superheroes and the reporter made me smile with delight. I felt like I was listening to many different people.