Book Review - Heroes: Saving Charlie

Published by Del Rey
272 pages

Heroes isn’t the best TV show I’ve ever seen, but it certainly is the most entertaining television series I’ve watched in a long time. I’m a semi-casual fan of American comics, and everything about Heroes screams “live-action comic,” from the storytelling methods (such as each episode’s climax being saved until the very end) to the often corny comic dialog. I’m only eleven episodes into season one, and have no intention of watching the second season until it comes out on DVD, but so far I am enjoying Heroes immensely. And given its popularity, it would seem as if I am not alone. Naturally, popularity breeds greed, and it was only inevitable that a novel based on the show would inevitably turn up. I mean, come on, there’s a novel adaptation of The Rundown, so when I got a copy of Heroes: Saving Charlie to review, I really wasn’t all that surprised. And, fortunately, I was far enough into the TV Heroes to prevent having anything terribly important spoiled by the book.

Saving Charlie is written by author Aury Wallington, a novelist and television writer that I am entirely unfamiliar with. With Saving Charlie, Wallington has crafted a short side story that meshes very well with its source subject matter. The novel takes place when Hiro, the time-travelling Japanese office worker with dreams of fulfilling a superheroic destiny, and his buddy Ando stop at the Burnt Toast Diner on their way to “save the cheerleader,” and therefore “save the world.” Long story, one that Saving Charlie sums up quite nicely several times throughout, so I’ll spare you the details. Long story short, Hiro meets another person with mysterious powers at this diner, a cute redhead waitress named Charlie. When Charlie is murdered in the exact same fashion Hiro has witnessed before, he resolves to travel to the day prior and prevent Charlie from coming in to work. But Hiro hasn’t yet perfected time-travelling, and instead catapults himself six months into the past. Rather than try to correct the error and risk messing up time more than he already has, Hiro waits it out, getting to know Charlie better in the mean time.

Heroes: Saving Charlie, which is written in the third person entirely from Hiro’s perspective, is ultimately a love story both lighthearted and angsty, especially as Hiro comes closer and closer to realizing that he might not be able to save Charlie. But there are other subplots, such as the all-too-relatable anguish Hiro endures as he thinks back to his father, an especially strict man who values hard work and is consistently disappointed by his son’s actions. This subplot eventually crosses paths with the main story. The end result is predictable. About a third of the way into the book I made a mental bet on how the rest of the novel would go, and sure enough, I was pretty much dead on. Not that I minded finishing the book, mind you; it was a fine read that kept me reasonably entertained from front to back. But Saving Charlie does nothing outstanding or original. It is simply an extension of the Heroes franchise. And that’s just fine; it doesn’t pretend to be anything more than that. It’s a relatively short novel that meshes with the TV show very well.

Heroes: Saving Charlie isn’t a bad read in the slightest, but nothing about the book is terribly spectacular or unexpected. It is an entertaining side story for die hard Heroes fans, but that’s about it. Other than some interesting insights into Hiro’s character, the novel is notably unspectacular, though not badly written. Pick it up if you really like Heroes, especially if you like Hiro himself.

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