High Voltage by Anthony Price - A Review

I first discovered Anthony Price through his novel 'The House of Wood', a creepy and well told horror story, a year or two ago. Since then I have been keeping an eye out for something new from him since then. A couple of months ago I received an email from Anthony - at last, a new book from him. Would I consider reviewing it? Well that must have taken me all of two seconds to decide on my answer.

As I said, the first novel (tHoW) was firmly in the Horror Genre but with High Voltage the author has gone into YA/Superhero. The story is, in essence, an 'origin' story concerning our hero Kellen Amos and how he becomes the masked vigilante Voltage. To a point it's pretty formulaic at times (he's struggling at school, has a hopeless crush on a beautiful girl who is dating the school's sporting superstore, he has a chubby, dorky friend) but that doesn't make it dull. Again, as you come to expect from these kind of tales there is a laboratory accident which leads to Kellen being able to control electricity (hence the vigilante/superhero name Voltage) and store it for when he needs to use it in his fight for good. A good bit of time is spent learning what he can do and how he can make use of his 'gift' before he gets down to the business of crime solving.

The crime in question is the theft of an ancient Egyptian staff from the Zygonia City Museum which could well be a powerful artefact (but what else would you expect it to be really?). The whole thing with the vigilante superhero, museum artefact robbery, the city of Zygonia and gang of bad guys with a villainous boss  reminded me very much of Batman (the Adam West version from the 60's) at times but I've always been a sucker for this kind of Superhero saga so, as you may have guessed I really quite enjoyed it.

This is book 1 in the Vigilante Chronicles, I don't know what the next book will hold. Will it be more of Voltage's adventures or a new 'vigilante'? One thing I do know is I will be looking forward t  it when it comes out and you will find a review here.

A good summer read for the Young Adult in your life (and then you can borrow it when they're done), pacey and well written

7/10