Where most books featuring transgender people fall into the limited categories of memoir and gender theory, Alicia E. Goranson is advocating for a broader range of trans experiences in print, and Supervillainz goes some of the way in doing this. With her book Goranson has thrown down the gauntlet and is inviting more authors to write "fun and believable transfolk into popular fiction."

It's true that T is often overlooked in LGBT publishing, and life and, nearly forty years after Stonewall, a novel like this is long overdue.

A hard-edged tale of passion, revenge and low-rent living, Supervillainz has romance, car chases, brutal superheroes, and epic battles in dyke bars. It is a fantastical novel, where violence is dished out by guys in robot suits, and Goranson plays with hero/villain clichés where the "villains" have been forced into that role by the heroes. It's also entertaining, fun and real; characters Bit and Devon emerge fully-formed and secure in their identities, they don't have to explain themselves.

I am not bipolar, but reading Supervillainz is how I imagine a bout of mania to feel. It's all pow! Pow! Pow! Which fits with the cartoonish style, but is hard to digest. The high energy of Goranson's writing pings and zings off every surface, her prose is larger than life, more colourful, more exciting, yet also leaves you feeling rather exhausted, craving a bit of peace and quiet, and more solid plotting.

In queer writing, especially that which has a political agenda of some sort, there is often a tension between the writer's noble aims and the quality of the fiction. Ideally these should be matched, but where it is skewed to one side the reader must inevitably make allowances, which is what I did when reading this novel. So although the quality of the writing can be patchy, it is thrilling indeed to come across a novel that presents transgender characters and gender queer street life in a way that is recognisable, though also fantastical.

Supervillainz is one of two winners of the first Project: QueerLit contest for first-time queer novelists, which means that whatever problems exist for me in this novel are entirely forgivable because of the author's inexperience. Indeed, as a first novel Supervillainz is a worthy prize winner, and I'm looking forwards to reading more of her work as the author matures.

Supervillainz, by Alicia E. Goranson
Published by: Suspect Thoughts Press
ISBN: 0976341182

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