Secret origins

After Bethany gets a lead about her missing father, she and Owen end up in an obscure superhero comic. The comic has been rewritten so that heroes can never win and Jupiter City is now ruled by an evil villain. Gathering friends from other books to help, the Story Thieves discover more about Doc Twilight, the Dark, and Bethany's origin stories. Taking on the comic-book world in this third Story Thieves installment, Bethany and Owen find themselves fighting against hero and villain tropes, which are sure to entertain readers, and the ending offers a promise of more to come.--Thompson, Sarah Bean Copyright 2016 Booklist

Bethany's latest book-diving exploit takes her and her friends into a superhero comic, a realm where, of course, the good guys always winor do they?Following the electrifying discovery that her long-missing fictional dad is the superhero Doc Twilight, the white girl trails him from "this" world to Jupiter City, a burg of costumed heroes and villains that has been rebooted by its writer into an authoritarian dystopia under the thumb of a vengeful scenery-chewer known only as the Dark. Along with weaving "fiction," "nonfiction," and metafiction in brain-bending ways, Riley continues to have great fun with his premisestocking Jupiter City with villains like Dr. Apathy and a fruit-themed gang led by Rotten Banana; slipping in pop-culture references from Squirrel Girl to "I've got a bad feeling about all of this"; and among other revelations describing how his string-pulling alter ego "Nobody" used a certain unnamed classic about a boy and a tree to subvert one of pop fiction's most fundamental tropes. He also has Bethany sacrifice herself (seemingly) and strands her best bud Owen in a choose-your-own-plot novel with a disingenuous invitation to readers to leave him there. Bethany's other allies, the comically misnamed Charm and dark-skinned, relentlessly upbeat Gwen, supply further banter, chemistry, and diversity to this tangled episode. A literary hall of mirrors, with plenty of thrills and laughs to keep "nonfictionals" in the game. (Metafictional fantasy. 11-13) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

After Bethany gets a lead about her missing father, she and Owen end up in an obscure superhero comic. The comic has been rewritten so that heroes can never win and Jupiter City is now ruled by an evil villain. Gathering friends from other books to help, the Story Thieves discover more about Doc Twilight, the Dark, and Bethany's origin stories. Taking on the comic-book world in this third Story Thieves installment, Bethany and Owen find themselves fighting against hero and villain tropes, which are sure to entertain readers, and the ending offers a promise of more to come. Copyright 2016 Booklist Reviews.