Book Review: Sacred Band

Joseph D Carriker Jr's debut novel Sacred Band tells the story of a young gay superhero attempting to solve the mystery of what has happened to an online acquaintance who has gone missing. Along the way, he recruits other heroes to help him, which eventually leads to the formation of a new superhero team, the Sacred Band. And the discovery of a threat far more sinister than initially guessed.

Carriker has put a lot of thought and detail into the individual and collective origin stories for his superheroes. In the world of Sacred Band, the first generation of superpowered beings  appeared in the early 1970s; these two dozen or so "Originals" remain the most powerful of their kind today, but are rarely seen. The event that created the Originals was followed by numerous Echo events: unnatural disasters that cause massive loss of life and produce a handful of superpowered individuals (not all of whom survive the process for long). These "Echoes" are carefully monitored by their governments (in the US and Europe, at least) to make sure they receive the training needed to control their powers enough to not be a threat to public safely, and to insure that none operate as vigilantes. The military has managed to produce a handful of supers through experiments attempting to replicate Echo events, but these Enhanced super-soldiers are even more tightly controlled.

The story's cast have a wide variety of powers, and the author has put a great deal of thought into how they operate and interact with each other and the world. True to the superhero genre, most characters have a number of tried and true tricks they use on a regular basis, but they can accomplish even greater stunts when they are forced to push their limits during tough fights or other crises (though often at some cost). The main characters include:

• Rusty, AKA Gauss, is the primary point-of-view character. He is a young gay Echo with power over magnetism. 
• Deosil (pronounced "jey-shul") is Rusty's best friend. This trans woman has elemental powers that complement her calling as a practicing witch. 
• Sentinel is an Original with telekinetic powers who was leader of the Champions (the first superhero team) until his teammate Radiant was killed. The scandal of Sentinel's coming out after Radiant's death, combined with significant political strife within the team, ultimately led to the disbanding of the Champions and a government crackdown on all other vigilantism. 
• Optic is a US government-created Enhanced who left military service after his own "don't ask, don't tell" scandal.. His light-based powers allow him to blind foes and fly by becoming light itself.
• Llorona is a Latino woman whose sonic powers allow her to phase through solid objects. She is heavily involved with the Golden Cross, an international disaster relief group composed of supers.

The real triumph of this novel is its realistic and sympathetic portrayal of LGBT characters. Rusty's sexual orientation plays a major role in his decisions--he's worried enough about a gay online acquaintance to take dangerous risks to investigate his disappearance, and he keeps tripping over his intense hero-worshiping crush on Sentinel--but it's only one facet of a character who is surprisingly well-rounded for the superhero genre. Similarly, Deosil's identity as a trans woman informs much of her personality and motivation. Other characters' reactions to her range from the highly negative (vicious transphobic insults in an early scene in a gay bar) to the unconditionally positive (Rusty's constant and affectionate support throughout), and Deosil herself struggles with the prospect of being an all-too-public example to other trans people. And that's really what Carriker has accomplished here: raising up examples to be accepted, admired, and embraced by both LGBT readers and others. Representation matters!

Overall, Sacred Band is highly satisfying as a gripping superhero story, and as an intelligent exploration of LGBT issues. The combination of the two is a rare achievement, and one that deserves to be applauded and widely shared. It also deserves a sequel. (Please, Joe?)