[nooneelse]

I'll second the "not the only one" sentiment. As a child, I liked the book. As an adult, I feel it used my childish mindset and desire to feel special as tools to manipulate me into thoughtlessly accepting a dubious moral framework. As such, I think it is largely over-rated as a work through the common mechanism of idolization of what one liked as a child.

Since I can't very well read it again for the first time, I was happy to find a couple of years ago that a narrative-astute friend of mine had happened to never read it. So I encouraged him to give it a try and was extremely careful to say nothing of the ambivalence I've had for it. He summed it up as pulp designed as a preteen want-to-be-a-superhero hook with an twist about on a level with a middling Twilight Zone episode. Thus ends my anecdote.