Book Review: Sound of Light: A Marvel School of X Novel by Amanda Bridgeman

I used to really like Marvel Studios movies, but for the past few years I haven’t enjoyed them. Instead, I shifted my focus from watching Marvel movies to reading comic books only.

I have been aware of Marvel novel that have been published over the past few years. For the most part I passed over many of them, but a few have caught my eye. One of them is Sound of Light.

Last year, during a time when I missed the way the stories old Marvel Studios movies had, I decided to pick up some of the Marvel novels I own. I was hoping I could fill the void these movies left when the story telling and other elements of the movies changed. The first books I read was Sound of Light. After reading it, I decided to write a dedicated review about it.

The book’s synopsis from Amazon is…

When rock star Dazzler walked out on S.H.I.E.L.D., she hoped she’d seen the last of the clandestine organization. But when a rogue agent drops in after a sold-out gig, she must decide whether to work with them again or stick to her solo career. The agent links Mutant Growth Hormone – a dangerous biochemical that wildly enhances mutant powers – with the disappearance of Magneto and Cyclops. Reluctantly, Dazzler takes the case and unfolds a mystery greater than she anticipated. In need of a new team, she recruits the extraordinary mutants Emma Frost, Polaris, and Rachel Grey on a mission to foil a plot to remove mutantkind forever, which blasts them from Earth into a whole new dimension.

Before I go into the book, I wanted to mention I really loved the Dazzler. She is one of my favorite characters from the comic books growing up, but she was always one of the characters that I liked less than Rogue. Yet, I still really loved her. I love music, I am a musician, and wanted to turn my love of music into a career. Yet, my life didn’t follow the path I hoped it would. Instead, I began to focus on a job that is more practical than a career in music. This is why she became a character I began to really relate to as an adult. Because of my fangirl history with the Dazzler, and the lack of media featuring her, I naturally picked Sound of Light to read it before any other book I own.

As you can imagine, I was worried about how the Dazzler’s story and the novel would play out. I was really burned out on Marvel Studios and was worried the Dazzler and the novel would suffer the same way Marvel movies do. Instead, I really enjoyed it! The novel is fast paced, but it is similar to 2012’s Marvel’s Avengers movie. I really enjoy the pacing of the movie, and that is one of the many reasons why I love the movie over all other Avengers movies, so I really loved reading the book. The story is told with enough backstory to get a better idea of who the Dazzler and other characters, such as Emma Frost, without dwelling on them too much. The descriptions of both the characters’ thoughts and actions as well as their surroundings are really well done, but are not overdone. The story is really enjoyable and features strong female characters with plenty of instances for them to show how strong yet imperfect they are.

As you can see, I love the book. It is a young adult book, but it is clean sans for any sort of action scenes. The lead characters are mostly female and they grow as you read the story. I love how the Dazzler is portrayed in the book. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a book that reminds them of the old way Marvel Studios movies were like, looking for a strong female characters that are flawed yet realistic, and anyone looking for an action novel for a teenage girl to read without references to current pop singers and whatever is going on in their lives.

That’s all for now! Thank you for reading!