Book #10

Green Lantern: Sleepers, book one (ua), by Christopher J. Priest and Mike Baron.

Sleepers is a trilogy of novels created by Mike Baron and Christopher J. Priest. It is a stand-alone series, not novelizations of stories from the comic books. Each volume focuses on a different Green Lantern — book one focuses on Kyle Rayner, although Alan Scott and Hal Jordan are also appear in this first volume of the series.

To set the world of this novel, Alan Scott is a retired Green Lantern, now a succesful businessman. His daughter Jenny-Lynn possesses the power of the Starheart, giving her similar powers as Jade. She is dating Kyle Rayner, the current Green Lantern, who has gone through his stage as Ion. In the continuity of this story, former Green Lantern Hal Jordan has been Parallax and is currently The Spectre, the manifestation of God's divine judgment.

The story starts in the World War II era, where an American serviceman is given a strange ring by a mysterious alien. The ring stays in his family until the present day, when the serviceman's grandson Eddie Roach finds it. By putting on the ring, Roach activates the buried program of the ring, which slowly turns Roach into a manifestation of Green Lantern's arch-villain Sinestro.

This manifestation of Sinestro is being used by Qwardian weaponers to stage an invasion of earth from Saturn. They have ruined their own planet, and believe that Earth would be a suitable replacement. Unfortunately the Qwardian exists in an anti-matter univese, so their presence in our universe would end with an ugly explosion.

Kyle and Jade come together to fight Eddie/Sinestro. Many members of the Justice League are neutralized, much to Plastic Man's chagrin. But they are aided in their final battle by Black Canary and the Spectre. There are super-powered battles in space, on Saturn, and on Earth. The ultimate conclusion to the novel seemed to come quickly, but mostly made sense and fit the rest of the story.

I am not as knowledgable of Kyle's tenure as GL as I am of others, but the basic characterization of him in this novel seemed appropriate. He is a little self-centered, a little selfish, but at heart a good man. The character beats with Jade give us glimpses of his romantic side, and also his jealous side. These were nice breaks in the action.

I listened to the GraphicAudio version of the book. GraphicAudio has carved out an impressive niche turning DC Comics novelizations and novels into full-cast audio dramas. They are very well produced, with cinematic music and sound effects that almost always enhace rather than detract from the listening experience.

Green Lantern is among the most visual of comic book characters, which poses a challenge for an audio production. But the descriptions of constructions were find, and good audio presentation lets the listener's imagination fill in the details, maybe even better than a visual can.

In this one specifically, most of the voice acting was strong, especially Alan Scott, Hal Jordan, Eddie and Jade. Kyle is fine, as are Green Arrow and Plastic Man. Superman stands out in my memory as one of the weaker performances.

I enjoyed this as a fun light listen, and anticipate getting to the other two novels soon.