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Stan Lee's Alliances: A Trick of Light cover art

Stan Lee's Alliances: A Trick of Light

By: Stan Lee, Kat Rosenfield, Created by Stan Lee, Luke Lieberman, Ryan Silbert
Narrated by: Yara Shahidi
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Meet the Creators

Stan Lee was known to the world as the man whose superheroes propelled Marvel to its preeminent position in the entertainment industry. His co-creations included Spider-Man, The Avengers, Black Panther, X-Men, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, and hundreds of others. Lee continued to serve as Marvel Entertainment’s Chairman Emeritus until his death in 2018. Lee was also the Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment, which he founded with production partner Gill Champion and attorney Arthur Lieberman.In Stan Lee’s Alliances: A Trick of Light, Lee chose the immersive medium of audio to share one of his latest universes and casts of superheroes. His trademark mastery of creating both engaging and provocative story lines is on full display as he and his co-creators developed a fascinating new world to explore that deftly comments on our own.

Meet the Creators

Academy Award winning filmmaker Ryan Silbertis a writer, producer, author, and founder of Origin Story Entertainment, a multi-platform entertainment company with a global focus on storytelling. Silbert’s next project is Stan Lee’s Alliances: A Trick of Light, an original, first-of-its kind audio storytelling event produced by Amazon’s Audible Studios and starring Yara Shahidi. Created by Silbert, Luke Lieberman, and Stan Lee in the late cultural icon’s final collaboration, Stan Lee’s Alliances: A Trick of Light will debut on June 27th as an Audible Original. With work recognized by the Academy Awards, the Canadian Academy of Film & Television, Sundance, and the Berlinale, Silbert’s repertoire includes such films as the Academy Award winning God of Love and Spike Lee’s The Girls in Trouble. Silbert is currently in development on television, film, and immersive narratives projects created specifically for audio platforms.

Meet the Creators

Luke Lieberman started his career working for the legend, who mentored him in the art of storytelling. He left Stan's employ to relaunch the Red Sonja comic book franchise, which has published over 300 issues and 60 graphic novels, and where he serves as licencor and executive editor to this day. Luke also practices intellectual property and entertainment law at Rosenfeld, Meyer & Susman of Los Angeles. His current projects include writingthis year’s Red Sonja: Birth of a She-Devil mini-series for Dynamite Entertainment, executive producing the Red Sonja feature motion picture, and co-creating Stan Lee's Alliances: A Trick of Light, an innovative audio experience from Audible Studios and performed by Yara Shahidi, with Ryan Silbert, and Stan "The Man" Lee himself.

Meet the Creators

Kat Rosenfield is an Edgar-nominated author and pop culture journalist with a gift for reporting on digital-age dramas from the place where art and politics intersect. In 2018, Kat was tapped to co-author Stan Lee's Alliances: A Trick of Light, with icon Stan Lee. She previously authored two young adult novels, the Edgar-nominated Amelia Anne Is Dead and Gone (2012) and Inland (2014). Kat began her career in journalism at MTV News, reporting on TV, film, books, and young Hollywood culture. Her work includes critical essays for Playboy, TV recapping for Entertainment Weekly, and live-blogging the 2016 US presidential debates and election results for Us Weekly. Her more recent work as a freelance journalist includes seminal reporting on controversies within the young adult publishing community. Rosenfield is a co-host of the Feminine Chaos podcast on Bloggingheads.tv and a contributing editor at Tablet.

Meet the Performer

Actress, model, activist,and youth speaker Yara Shahidi is quickly emerging as a generational voice able to captivate and inspire audiences both on-and off-screen. With a combination of raw talent, authenticity, and passion for projects of substance, Shahidi’s narration of Stan Lee’s Alliances: A Trick of Light adds another distinct level of depth and sophistication to this visionary work. Best known for her breakout television work in Black-ish and Grown-ish, she most recently starred in the 2019 film The Sun Is Also a Star. Shahidi was a recipient of the "Generation Next" award at the 10th Annual Essence Black Women in Hollywood event and is intimately involved in various educational and social initiatives. Among them, Eighteen x 18, founded by Shahidi to encourage voter turnout, and Yara’s Club, a partnered venture with the Young Women’s Leadership Network of New York, focused on education.

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Critic reviews

A Trick of Light is uncannily frightening, amazingly modern, incredibly moving and impossible to put down. You will recognize these characters, and you may be surprised to see yourself in their struggles in an increasingly over-connected, yet under-considered world. There are fears here that didn’t exist when Marvel Comics was created, and it’s fascinating to see Stan and company take the scalpel to them, and the listener. Listen to this book.” (Gail Simone)

“Leave it to Stan Lee to save his very best for last. A Trick of Light is as heartfelt and emotional as it is original and exciting. What a movie this one will make.” (James Patterson) 

"For lovers of Stan Lee this is nothing short of a publishing event! (And, honestly, who the hell doesn't love Stan Lee?) Beguiling, cinematic, operatic, A Trick of Light is a bracing espresso first thing in the morning and the thrum of a familiar love deep at night.” (Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and Lake Success)

What listeners say about Stan Lee's Alliances: A Trick of Light

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Good but one problem

The story was good but the narrator let it down. Her voice felt flat, like her heart wasn’t in it.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

A disappointing & predictable story

I had high hopes for this book as it seemed like a really interesting concept, but the story is disappointing, predictable and bland.
The narration doesn’t help and is very monotonous. Not helped by jarring editing, in particular the words “Juaquo says” have been recorded once and pop in in a different tone of voice from the narration.

Overall, not a book I would listen to again, and it leaves me with no interest in following the story into subsequent books in the series.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

A good story made cringe-worthy

I don't often leave bad reviews but I'm struggling to listen to this story with this narration. I can't but visualise this being read from the book with such little feeling and variation and tone. A very bad choice of reader, in my opinion, to the point where I am finding it too poor and cringe worthy to continue listening.
Update... well I finished it... a labour of love and a testament to the storyline being good enough to withstand the appalling narration. She reads what the characters say well enough, but the rest of the storyline is intoned in a childish word by word way that makes you think her finger was pointing below the text and has no ability to scan ahead as she reads...

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Well that is time I will never get...

Not only did I struggle with the narrator, I struggled with the slow pace and story. I thought a number of times about giving up completely but hoped it would get better. It did not.

I was so excited for this book and that excited is now a memory. I would not recommend this.

It was meh!

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great, thought-provoking start

4.75 Stars

While this has some similarities to other stories I have read this has genuinely interesting characters that I cared about, an engrossing plot that caused me to listen to it in one sitting and until well after midnight. As well as that it was a plot that made me think about how we depend upon and use technology in the real world too. The narration was good too.

I really hope they decide to carry on releasing what Stan Lee has been working on prior to his death as I for one want to find out what happens next.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Fun story, but has old gender roles embedded in it.

I enjoyed the story - the performance was spot on - but I felt that the female protagonist got damselled and was left reliant on the male protagonist. It has potential as the start of a series, and with Lee’s death, I fear it may not be realised. There was a lot that wasn’t explored, such as why and how people got empowered and that bit where one character became a murderer for a bit then didn’t address it afterwards. That’s all material for later stories. I hope it will continue, but we’ll have to see. I also hope that the female protagonist gets her own agency and that we see some more female heroes to counterbalance the many female villains.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Young Adult reading

Imaginative and, in places, engaging: but this is definitely there for young adults rather than the oldies amongst us! Lots of references to 80s and 90s films, video games and books, with a hint of horror in places. Frankly I should have realized that this was for a different audience.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Didn’t get through it

Narration is so bad I couldn’t get through the first hour. Story didn’t seem too bad but the narrator ruined it completely for me that I couldn’t continue it!

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2 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Nothing special

Normally Stan Lee is full of surprises, but this left me wanting from the get go. The character development felt very recycled and the plot was so well signposted that any surprises became obvious..
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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

so good, now wheres book 2?

so great, so well written too
great to hear stans voice again
need book 2 now though

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1 person found this helpful