Hugh J. O'Donnell

Genrenauts: The Shootout Solution
Written by Michael R. Underwood
Published by Tor

Writing metafiction is a difficult needle to thread. Fiction about fiction can easily become maze-like and incomprehensible, and it makes the reader very aware of the author. By its very nature, it doesn’t suspend disbelief. Metafiction done well can be cathartic and clever. Done poorly, it just feels like a writer bragging about their MFA in literature. So I was a little leery approaching Michael Underwood’s “Genrenauts” novellas, but after finishing the first one, he’s managed to pull off something extraordinary.
Leah Tang is a standup comedian struggling to make her big break while holding down a boring day job she hates. When a strange man offers her a dream job, she is skeptical at first, but jumps at the chance.
She joins the Genrenauts. An elite, highly secret team that travels to parallel worlds and fixes problems before they bleed over into our world. Leah’s first mission is to help a desert town in Western World. But the Genrenauts don’t save the day. They put stories back on track, which is a much more difficult proposition.
Underwood’s concept of genres as alternate realities is fun and has a lot of possibilities to it. He gets to show off his own savviness with tropes and conventions, but giving these discussions to the characters rather than the narrator softens the rough edges. It makes for a quick novella read that gives old tropes new tricks. Making genres living, breathing worlds might not have worked in a longer book, but it sets the stage quickly and lets the reader get right to the plot without too much fuss here.
The other real strength is the Genrenauts team, whom the reader only gets introduced to here. Leah is the newbie on the team, and there are a lot of first impressions, but the characters seem to all have a lot of hidden depths. Putting them up against genres that often rely on stock, pulpy characters is an interesting dynamic.
Genrenauts: The Shootout Solution is a quick, delightful introduction to a novella series that is built on a great premise. I can’t wait to see what adventures the Genrenauts have ahead of them, and what other adventures they’ll have to fix. Genrenauts is available in ebook from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, MichaelRUnderwood.com.