Curmudgeon's Corner: There is only one Harry Potter, Review of Insignia

I wrote about this book in one of my Waiting on Wednesday entries. What I was worried about ended up being a problem for me in both the ways I was expecting and ways I was not expecting. From the description, I knew that it might be similar to Ender's Game, which it was. What I didn't expect was that the three main characters would be Harry = Tom, Ron = Vik, and Hermione = Wyatt.

But I am ahead of myself. As you all may recall, I went to a Dark Days Tour event this past week, and the author Kincaid was there talking about her new book, Insignia. Despite my reservations, I was tempted from the rave reviews about it, so I picked it up while I was there. I did have problems with it, which I will get to, but it was still entertaining enough to rate as 4 stars out of 5.


Insignia is about a 14 year old boy named Tom who has nothing going for him and keeps his gambling addict father and himself clothed and housed through gaming. The government hears of him and soon he is whisked to the Pentagonal Spire where he is implanted with a neural device that allows him to enhance his knowledge with downloadable content; he effectively becomes a soldier in the military who want to use his talents for the current world war. Soon, he is pitted against the deadly but fascinating Medusa in a battle to end all battles.

As I said before, I had a hard time rating this book because through 75% of the book, I was very distracted by the fact that the author basically transplanted the Hogwarts trio into Ender's Game. Literally, I could match up plot lines and characters from each book to the ones in Insignia. At the same time, it was still entertaining to read (since I obviously liked both of the aforementioned books). And the last 25% (with one exception) made it all worth reading because it finally focused on my favorite character of all, Medusa, and it veered away from the previous formulas a bit more. The characters are lovable and funny. Since I liked Hermione the best from Harry Potter, it's not surprising that I enjoyed Wyatt, her counterpart, probably the second most after Medusa. The protagonist, Tom, is very likeable but is definitely flawed and adolescent-- Kincaid knows how to write 14 year old boy perspectives! Blackburn, the Snape equivalent, is appropriately creepy. And Yuri, the Russian, was really fun-- and possibly the most original of the cast.

Overall, it was a fun read, and I'll keep it on my shelf, but this series needs to work more on originality; hopefully the next installment will showcase this talent.

How do you feel when characters of a popular series are copied into another book?