The Legacy Quest Trilogy
X-Men, No. 1
By Steve Lyons 

     Those mighty mutants are back, and this time they are involved in a race to find a cure for the dreaded Legacy virus that is killing them off one by one. It also kills regular people and both, mutant Hank McCoy (The Beast) and ordinary Moira Mc Taggert are both working together to find a treatment. Trouble is, so is their old adversary Sebastian Shaw, the Black King of the Hellfire Club. He has set up a lab where the Kree once conducted experiments millennia ago, and is determined to pool his resources with his enemies. He will stop at nothing to find a cure, and is not averse to kidnapping or worse to achieve his aim…

     Lyons has come up with a lively story that would make a thrilling film. One of the great things about any film tie-in book is that you can read about the sort of large-scale action that action film makers love, but which costs a lot to produce. The X-Men are on fine form in this author's hands and although we don't gain any new insights into their characters, they are all thoroughly put through their paces. There isn't a lot of plot here and it is a pretty linear tale but Lyons' main strength is in the way he writes the action scenes, and these do literally pack a punch. The arcane and decadent world of the Hellfire Club could have been more extensively described, and at the end of this novel remains tantalizingly sketchy. I haven't read any of the preceeding books and wished that I had, so I can recommend that these are sought out and read first for a fully-rounded X-Men experience. But I enjoyed it regardless, and so should any other fan of superhero fiction.