Most people who read webfiction are familiar with the name of Alexandra Erin, at this point.  She’s one of the few, the proud, the actually-making-money at writing online.  Her most popular story is Tales Of MU, found elsewhere in the reviews.

But, despite ToMU’s popularity, I would argue that Star Harbor Nights is by far a better work.  AE takes a genre, this time superhero, and turns it on its head, much like her take on fantasy worlds in ToMU.  The difference, however, is that this world actually gets explored.  ToMU gets held back by the biases and sexual activities of its narrator, Mackenzie Blaze.

SHN doesn’t follow just one protagonist, it follows a massive cast of entertaining characters.  You have to START IN THE ARCHIVE OF OLD STORIES where it all begins: there’s Perfect Jones, a girl with genius abilities who talks to her stuffed rabbit when she’s thinking out loud, and who’s trying to figure out who’s burning churches in the city, and forms a super hero team to find out.  There’s Mindfyre, a telekinetic/pyrokinetic looking to make it to the A-list of superheroes, who are celebrities in the Star Harbor world, and ends up forming her own team and stopping a madman’s plan for world domination using people as literal puppets.

Alongside these concurrently running storylines, you’ll find the Wisdom Sisters, Athena and Minerva, descended from the Amazons of Greek myth.  Then there’s their insane villain of a cousin, the unkillable Rhyme, who takes crazy to a whole new, humourously dangerous level.  There’s the Sands of Time, a bar that exists outside of reality, where characters from AE’s other stories (as well as the rest of fiction’s pantheon) can pop up from time to time.  Not to mention the Hex Kittens, who are able to punch through the fourth wall and talk to readers while messing with the narration, in between rock star concerts, fighting crime as cats and being awesome.

The cast is unique, compelling, funny and creative.  The story has interweaving plotlines of dizzying, entertaining complexity.  You can tell the entire world of the SHN characters occupies a great deal of space in AE’s imagination, and it’s worth exploring.  It’s a lot more mainstream-reader friendly than ToMU, because it’s lighter on sexual themes and the soap-opera drama common to that story.  It’s a fast-paced fun time, and it deserves a bigger audience.

As much as I respect the time and effort Linda Schoales puts into her reviews on this site, her 3 1/2 star rating is misleading—she’s only read 54 chapters of the new material, and not the archive which is available on the Star Harbor site.  Doing so would resolve a lot of the confusion she seems to have with the names of characters and the relationships between them, as well as the extent of plotlines and action.  READ THE ENTIRE ARCHIVE, you’ll be glad you did.

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