Legend - by Ryk E Spoor (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The first superhero novel that takes the cape off and asks what's underneath, Legend is where comic book mythology meets genuine literary character work, written for the generation that grew up on Stan Lee and stayed for the therapy.

The world's first superhero just walked into a therapist's office. He has no idea how much he needs to be there.

Ben Stephens is nineteen years old, barely out of high school, and carrying a secret that would break most people twice his age. When the world changed and magic came flooding back into reality, Ben became Legend, the first and greatest of the new heroes. Different body, different face, different everything. The problem is he still has to go home afterward and be himself.

Dr. Jennifer Hsui is a brilliant psychiatrist with a complicated history with superheroes, a six-year-old daughter who worships Densetsu on Saturday mornings, and absolutely no intention of getting emotionally involved with a client. Then Legend climbs through her tenth-floor window and asks for an appointment.

What begins as an exploration of identity, doubles, and the psychological weight of being a symbol slowly becomes something far more urgent. Heroes are disappearing. Not dying, not retiring. Vanishing, one by one, their bodies left behind like empty houses. Someone has been planning this for a very long time, and the plan is almost complete.

Legend is a story about what it costs to be the person everyone else believes in, about the difference between the hero you dream of being and the person you actually are, and about a small girl handing a dying god a wrinkled piece of fruit and saving the world.

Perfect for fans of Soon I Will Be Invincible and the more character-driven corners of superhero fiction.

About the Author

Ryk E. Spoor was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and has lived in South Dakota, Georgia, New York, and Pennsylvania. Severe asthma forced him to spend most of his childhood reading and, by the time he was six, writing. He began with fantasy such as Oz and science fiction starting with Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but it was his fifth grade teacher who set the course of his career by lending him a battered copy of E.E. "Doc" Smith's Second-Stage Lensmen. That book sent him on a reading spree that devoured every science fiction title he could find for the next ten years, and instilled in him the conviction that being a science fiction author was the greatest profession anyone could aspire to. At the turn of the 21st century, he achieved that ambition by first launching a clever plan involving the diabolical stratagem of insulting Eric Flint in public (neither Eric nor Ryk recommend anyone else attempt this strategy). Eric subsequently brought Ryk's work to the attention of Baen Books, leading to the publication of Digital Knight, two collaborative stories with Eric Flint, and the novel Boundary.

His solo work continued with Grand Central Arena (2010), the Boundary sequel Threshold, and the complete Balanced Sword trilogy (Phoenix Rising, Phoenix in Shadow, and Phoenix Ascendant), as well as his first self-published novel, Polychrome. More recent titles include the magical girl novel Princess Holy Aura, the opening volume of a space opera trilogy Demons of the Past: Revelation, and French Roast Apocalypse, the first entry in the Fall of Veils series. Away from fiction, Ryk serves as Research and Development Coordinator for International Electronic Machines (IEM), where he has secured funding for and directed research into wireless MEMS sensor systems, power harvesting, and smart video security systems, holding several patents in these areas. He lives in Troy, New York, with his wife Kathleen and their four children, Christopher, Gabriel, Victoria, and Domenica.