Name: Soon I will be invincible
Rating: 3.421052631578947 (19 reviews)
ISBN: 9780375424861

Austin Grossman

novel

Soon I will be invincible

Soon I Will be Invincible

Charles Siboto

A colleague of mine innocently recommended this book to me because I like comic books and superheroes. This is a superhero comic book story presented in the form of a novel. The world building is very good and is very reminiscent of the rich world in Watchmen. There is a lot of history in the novel and it makes you want to dig a little deeper. The story is told from the viewpoint of the villain, Doctor Impossible and one of the heroes, Fatale. Throughout you kind of root for Impossible but both he, Fatale and the other characters are quite boring and you can't be bothered about them. Soon I Will Be Invincible is somewhat enjoyable but also forgettable.

Grossman has a superpower himself - it's called writing... winning, smart and funny... terrific' Douglas Copeland 'This morning on planet Earth there are 1686 enhanced, gifted, or otherwide-superpowered persons. 678 use their powers to fight crimes, while 441 use their powers to commit them. 44 are currently confined in Special Containment Facilities for enhanced criminals. Of these last, it is interesting to note that an unusually high proportion have IQs of 300 or more - eighteen to be exact. Including me...'

Bryan Alexander

A very enjoyable superhero novel. I don't know how non-comics-readers would respond to it, but fans of superhero stories should have a blast.

Soon I Will Be Invincible follows a supervillain and superhero through a nicely imagined world based on Marvel and DC comics. There are analogs to Batman, Superman, the Flash, Wonder Woman, etc.

The two protagonists are Doctor Impossible, a mad scientist, and Fatale, a cyborg. The book takes turns telling the story from each of their perspectives.

Fatale's story reads a bit like a young adult novel, with an orphaned young heroine trying to make sense of the world and her identity. Fatale joins a Justice League sort of supergroup, learns the ropes, struggles to fit in. Very sweet and convincing.

Doctor Impossible's story is quite different. He's much older, and the world's most notorious bad guy, so he's already established. Much of his narrative is introspective, looking back over his uneven career with a great deal of self-deprecation lacing the nyahahahaha villainy. You might be reminded of the movie Megamind (2010).

Both protagonists are very sympathetic and well realized.

The plot is a familiar one, with an evil scheme being met by the forces of justice. What's interesting is how much world-building Grossman accomplishes, and what we learn of the two main characters' interiors. The conclusion is a bit weak, though, lacking resolutions for Fatale and Dr. I., and feeling a bit perfunctory. 

Recommended as fine entertainment for comics readers.

PS: words of wisdom from Doctor Impossible:
When life gives you lemons you squeeze them, hard. Make invisible ink. Make an acid poison. Fling it in their eyes. (48)
[T]his is what my empire would be founded on, on raw computation and rage. (75)
There has to be a bit of crime in any theory, or it's not truly good science. (130)
Heroes don't concern themselves with things like libraries and research. Once they've had their origin, they don't try to think anymore, just fly around. Books, inventions, discovery - they leave that to us. (142)
He could fly, which was reason enough to resent him. He didn't even have the decency to work for it, to flap a pair of wings or at least glow a little. He seemed to do it purely out of a sense of entitlement - something about it suggested that the rest of us had simply knuckled under to gravity. (171)
My first act will be to demand the surrender of all the governments of Earth, via the United Nations Security Council. You have no alternative. Legal details of this process can be found on my web site. (265)

When Doctor Impossible, an evil genius and ambitious wannabe world dominator, launches a new plot to seize control of the world, Fatale, a woman built by the NSA to be the next generation of weaponry, joins a group of misfit superheroes in their quest tod

JengaEdging

Colton Ray

John Manoogian III

Micah

Nicklas Persson

Michael Cowell

Doctor Impossible—evil genius, would-be world conqueror—languishes in prison. Shuffling through the cafeteria line with ordinary criminals, he wonders if the smartest man in the world has done the smartest thing he could with his life. After all, he's lost every battle he's ever fought. But this prison won't hold him forever. Fatale—half woman, half high-tech warrior—used to be an unemployed cyborg. Now, she's a rookie member of the world's most famous super-team, the Champions. But being a superhero is not all flying cars and planets in peril—she learns that in the locker rooms and dive bars of superherodom, the men and women (even mutants) behind the masks are as human as anyone. Soon I Will Be Invincible is a wildly entertaining first novel, brimming with attitude and humor—an emotionally resonant look at good and evil, love and loss, power and glory.

Soon I will be invincible novel

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