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Soon I Will be Invincible (Vintage)
by Austin Grossman
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Vintage (2008-06-10)
ISBN: 0307279863
EAN: 9780307279866
Dewey Decimal #: 813
Binding/Media: Paperback - 336 pages
Release Date: 2008-06-10
SKU: T092110-soon
Condition: Very Good
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
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.
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Customer Reviews
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What an AWESOME read!!!
Rating  (5)
Date: 2010-07-26
I had my doubts at first, a book about superheroes... But I honestly cannot put it down. I'm a big fan of comics and movies and this book tells it like it is. It is told through the perspectives of a supervillian and a heroine. It really makes them seem"human" the way the author portryaes them. Trust me, purchase this book. You will not regret it!!!
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Soon I will be Invincible by Austin Grossman
Rating  (3)
Date: 2010-07-14
What Austin Grossman has been aiming for with SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE, it was definitely not Watchmen.
No matter how many times Austin talks about how Watchmen was one of his major influences for this book, SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE is a really a study about what it would be like being inside a superhero's (or villain's) head. It starts off with an interesting enough introduction: Dr. Impossible is in prison and looks to be starting anew. The plot he has in mind for world domination only indicates a very simple yet intriguing fact; that super villains can be out but never truly gone. They always come back.
On the other side, Corefire is dead, indicating another simple fact. Superheroes often claw their way out of miscellaneous graves, not before they were subjected to grievous harm that would have otherwise decimated normal people. Thanks to no small part to his invulnerability and heat vision, all the powers of a certain superhero from DC Comics' stable of heroes, he is said to be the world's greatest superhero. *snicker... And he is a former member of the original tri-champions, alongside Blackwolf, who just happens to be the only unpowered superhero, and Damsel, a princess of an alien planet, gifted with superhuman strength. The one primary grievance one could get from this book is that the characters are as original as those from a stock character list, formulated, perhaps, over a single weekend and without conviction.
It does have the intrigue of the inner-dialogue going on in the psyche of a super-cyborg, Fatale, who became the newest member of The New Champions, a poor man's Justice League if you ask me, but Dr. Impossible's side of the story sounds like a take on Lex Luthor, which isn't the freshest thing to read about in today's comics. There are a few more characters who appear to be more interesting, like Galatea and Feral, one sort of a tooth fairy (haha) and the other a half-tiger, but the fact that there are few original elements here, looks fairly obvious and very much like a sore thumb sticking out of a mud-crusted hole.
The prose can be attractive to read and listen to, but no amount of pretty sounding prose can hide the fact that Austin could've at least crafted something wholly original, like Watchmen was when it was first released in the crazy days of the mid 80's. It redeems itself, at least, with some decent plotting. Austin did well to highlight the numerous flashbacks that Fatale had from the time of her accident in Brazil, the very same that caused her to be subjected to cybernetic tampering and abuse. Done brilliantly, as is Dr. Impossible's struggles with his own flashbacks. If Austin has a particularly strong point in his writing, it is his ability to weave a relatively new adventure out of these clichéd characters.
That has saved this novel from being a mere "meh" to a decent superhero adventure yarn, full of exciting action in prose form. It serves as a decent effort at writing a comic story in words and nothing but words, a commendable effort, but it could've been epic instead if only Austin had decided from the get-go to write an unconventional superhero story with substance and salt in it. That would've been better instead, because the hype and excitement of a superhero story written in the form of prose can only carry a book so far in today's literary universe. It should be read, however, if only to get a gist of how super-humans operate under ordinary circumstances, but even a number of comic book stories has done better in that regard. Read it if you are desperate, in other words.
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Highly entertaining
Rating (5)
Date: 2010-06-09
This book is a great read. It mixes many classic comic book archetypes and themes with humor while viewing the whole thing from an alternative perspective. The result is a story that is genuinely fun to read. I think anyone can enjoy it, but you'll find it especially entertaining if you're a longtime comic book reader. Really well done.
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Super Novel is Super (A tautological review)
Rating  (4)
Date: 2010-06-07
A rare creature; "Soon i will be Invincible" is a comic book novel without a comic book franchise to fall back on. The interesting tale of two characters, one a world class super-villain, the other an up and coming super heroine. The book flips between the two perspectives as the story progress, but the stronger writing is not on the side of the angels, but is instead on the side of the megalomanical super villain.
This book hits all of the super-hero comic book cliches, without itself becoming a cliche (a hard to follow balancing act). The characterization is the main draw of this novel & is well worth picking up if you are a fan of super-hero comics but dislike the DC style noveliztions that pull in to much of the offical fandom. The most intersting point of the whole novel is being allowed a peek inside the thought process of an evil genius & seeing what makes him tick... Not that there isn't a whole heap of action in this novel.
Give it a once over, you'll kick your self if you don't.
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Muhahah every hero needs a nemesis
Rating (4)
Date: 2010-06-07
Doctor Impossible has a very simple goal... to take over the world. Yeah, he's the baddie.
Corefire has an equally simple goal... To stop Doctor Impossible.
In Soon I Will Be Invincible, Doctor Impossible has just busted out of prison (again) and Corefire is MIA. So stopping Doctor Impossible falls upon the shoulders of Corefire's team of fellow heroes (the Champions... New Champions). We watch the story unfold through the eyes of both Doctor Impossible and Fatale, the newest member to join the Champions (so new that she'd never met Corefire and knows him only via his many television appearances). Where is Corefire? Where is Doctor Impossible? How do you find the world's biggest hero and villain? If you don't find the hero can you stop the villain without him?
As a little bit of a comic / superhero geek (not so much so that I could win any trivia contests, just enough of one that I enjoy reading them now and then and that I have a bit of a thing for all things Superman) I really want to be able to give this that 5 star rating. It's a fun book. It's written in a way I love - back and forth, the good guy (girl), then the bad guy. It gets us into their heads. But, I just can't do it. It was so close, yet it fell just a little short. In comic book form or tv shows you can be teased quite a bit about a character, getting hints here and there about how they play into stories because you know the story is going to go on and on and on and on. It works. In novel format, it's a bit, eh... frustrating. We'd start to get info on this character or that one and then oh onto the action or end of that character's chapter, time for the other to speak to us. Okay, no problem, we'll get back to that. But then, at the end, you feel as though there were things you'd like to have seen more of that were actually never returned to, that were just incomplete, etc -- probably because we were just seeing this just through the eyes of the two main characters. They didn't have all of the info. But we, the readers, want more of that story, we want to know of those other characters too, of those missing pieces. And yes, the story goes on and on for those characters... but for us? Who knows? Is there a sequel in the works? I've not looked into that yet, but if this is a stand alone book, it's missing a bit.
BUT those faults are only enough to knock that one star off. Otherwise it's an excellent book, even tricking me with the ending. There was a character in the story, it was obvious they'd play an important role throughout, so I tried to figure out how. I was soooo sure I had it all figured it out. I just knew who they were. Boy was I wrong.
If there is a sequel, I'll be back. If not... well, *sigh* I'll just have to guess at why x character is this way and y charter is that way... and I'll just try to work out in my own head who really controls the world...
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