I will post a full review when I've finished the book, but so far, HFSM #5 is, intentionally or not, the funniest piece of HF media. One of the villains is punished because, in upside-down "evil is good" world, not robbing a bank when you have the chance to is a crime. The logical implications of this universe just make me laugh. The villain (I think it was Toxic Reapa) make it sound like an inconvenience, because he already robbed that bank twice that week and was tired.

I'm not going to defend the Rise of the Rookies TV episodes as anything great, but Von Nebula had some gravitas to him. There's zero implication that, if he wins, the galaxy will turn into this Pythonesque bureaucratic state. It recasts a lot of Von Nebula's previous characterization to make him, if we take this premise seriously, ridiculously immature. Von Nebula doesn't really hate Stormer or anything, he hates an extremely abstract, watered-down idea of "heroism." It's funny to imagine how this universe function, like why banks even exist if robbing them is legally mandated.

That being said, it's not a bad book. I was tempted to write, "Greg isn't even trying at this point," but that's not true. Some parts of the book, like describing Von Nebula's black-hole-corrupted body, are genuinely good and right up there with peak BIONICLE. It's more like, Greg is having fun. I feel like it was an open secret that HF wasn't going to be on shelves much longer, so no one was giving Greg much oversight on the Secret Mission books so Greg just pushed the envelope to see what Denmark would let him get away with. Stuff like this makes me wish the Secret Mission series did continue, just to see how surreal it would have gotten.