Book review: ‘Saving the World: A Guide to Heroes’

A few months ago we mentioned that there were a few books to be released focusing on Heroes. Now, we’ve got a book reviewer who has done just that. You know DayziJ as a regular poster here on HeroesARG. Now she can tell us what’s up with those books. Let’s all give her a warm welcome and “Thank you!” –Frank

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So, have you picked up a copy of Saving the World: A Guide to Heroes yet? This book by Lynnette Porter, David Lavery and Hillary Robson focuses on Season One of my favorite TV show, Heroes. It appears that the authors’ intent was to put together a resource and reference guide that could introduce someone to the series and frame it from historical, academic, and cultural perspectives. The book is divided into two parts. Part I is titled “Going Deep”. This part is further divided into subcategories: Television, Comics, Heroes and Villains, Light and Dark, and The Finale. Part 2 is titled “Enhancements”. Part 2 does what I always wanted to do during the first season but never had the time to put together; it serves as a great reference guide.

The first section of the first part of the book, “Television”, frames the show and the phenomena in a past tense, big-picture way. It explains Heroes in the way that a history book would; if my children were to pick up this book fifteen years from now they would have a solid understanding and reference point from which to frame Heroes and understand my obsession with it. The problem for me, however, was that a large portion of this section is dedicated to comparing and contrasting with the television series Lost. Having never seen Lost, and having no desire to, this section was incredibly meaningless and frustrating for me. I’m a Heroes fan, not a Lost fan, so the references and points made were “lost” on me. I understand that Lost helped to shape the creation of Heroes. But without some basic background knowledge about Lost, save yourself time and frustration and skip this section. Although I tried to read these pages and understand Lost through what I know of Heroes, I ultimately gave up on this portion of the book and moved on to the next section.

The next few sections of the book talk about the history and development of how Heroes came to be, including the planning and marketing of the show during the summer of 2006. This includes descriptions of the lengthy cinematic-looking television ads, Comic Con 2006, and the various websites and ARG that made up the Heroes 360 Experience. There is also a table included that outlines Hiro’s hero journey on this path that would make any 11^th grade English teacher proud. This table demonstrates how Hiro’s journey follows Joseph Campbell’s “12 steps of the hero journey”. Hiro’s “modern code of hero ethics” is also analyzed. Heroes connections to Star Wars and Star Trek are also discussed, as well as Heroes’ literary, comics and science fiction influences. I don’t want to give too much away; it was very interesting and enjoyable reading.

In my opinion the “Finale” section should have been left out or addressed another way. It is a fact that many fans felt disappointed by Episode 23. To address this, the book offers up a reprinted blog post of a Heroes fan, Nikki Stafford, who was disappointed by the finale “How to Stop an Exploding Man”. The section goes on to offer the reprinted rebuttal to Nikki’s post written by David Lavery, and then Nikki’s response to David’s response. It occurs to me that the exchange personally involves one of the authors of the book, and this is probably why this topic was approached this way. However, after such an academic approach to the history and analysis of Heroes in all of the other sections of the book, this section felt very out of place.

Part 2 is a great resource, especially for those with a mind for lists and details. This part of the book is approximately 90 pages long. It includes a comprehensive “Heroes Encyclopedia”, a season one episode guide, an episode title locator table, an index of the powers of the heroes, a table outlining the “unnatural deaths in Heroes”, appearances of the helix, Heroes graphic novel info, a list of Heroes websites, a detailed endnotes section, an extensive bibliography and filmography, and information about the various contributing authors.

With the exception of the Lost references, this was an easy and enjoyable read. There were some minor details I would add, change or fix here or there (for example, Mr. Linderman’s first name is Daniel, but he is only referred to as Mr. Linderman in the encyclopedia). But overall it was well worth the $10.17 from amazon.com and will be kept as a handy reference guide to accompany my Season One DVD.