The Shootout Solution

November 16, 2015
Underwood (Hexomancy) launches the Genrenauts series of novellas with this disappointing episod. The story is occasionally entertaining, but it's undercut by a plot both slight and trite, and a narrative voice too obsessed with snarky pop culture references to allow the story to grow. Leah Tang is an aspiring and generally unsuccessful stand-up comic. After a disastrous performance in which she digresses into a rant about her background as a young genre fan, she's approached by Dr. Angstrom King, a comparative literature professor. He explains that there are alternate worlds, each dedicated to fictional genres, and when things go wrong in those worlds, they affect Earth drastically. His teamâthe Genrenautsâgoes in to fix things, and he wants Leah to join them. It's an entertaining enough concept, and the diverse cast of characters is a nice change of pace. Alas, the clichés of genre literature are a little too on point, and Underwood neglects to twist or undermine them. The meta-trope of Leah as a chosen one never goes anywhere, and her excessive need to highlight pop-culture references distracts from the story itself. There's potential for growth, but not much incentive for readers to return. Agent: Sara Megibow, KT Literary.