Book 3.3: Soon I Will Be Invincible

Author: Austin Grossman
Dates read: July 21, 2011 - July 29, 2011 (9 days)
Pages: 287
Genre: Fiction, fantasy

This book isn’t very long, but I got a little mired in it because it was a much slower read than I’d anticipated. I was drawn to it because of the downtrodden supervillain narrator.

This novel follows a supervillain, Dr. Impossible, as he breaks out of a prison designed to hold people with superpowers and mounts yet another in a long series of attempts to take over the world. Simultaneously, his arch-enemy CoreFire is found dead after a long absence from public life and CoreFire’s old squadron of fellow superheroes decides to come together again to avenge his death, which they assume was at the hands of Dr. Impossible. The squadron bolsters its ranks with some new heroes, one of which is rookie Fatale, a woman who became half cybernetic after a tragic accident. Bouncing back and forth between Dr. Impossible’s and Fatale’s points of view, the book follows the two sides of the conflict as they move inexorably toward one another.

This novel had such a great concept as a base that I expected a lot from it. Ultimately, I was disappointed. It seemed like it would have a lot of action and tension and clashing of strong characters, but everything in the narrative that would fit those descriptors essentially happens “off-screen” and is recounted after the fact. Dr. Impossible and Fatale spend more time wallowing in their respective uncertainties and depressions than going through things in the present. I’m all for introspective characters, but even for me it seemed excessive. On top of this, there are too many forays into backstories/origin stories. It was well and good for the dozen or so characters that are relevant to the current events in the book, but basically every hero or villain that’s mentioned for any reason gets a dedicated origin story, and the number of superhumans in the book probably totals in the forties. As if that weren’t enough, these origin stories are often told twice, once from each narrator’s perspective, yet the information revealed by each narrator is nearly identical. Even during the climax, there are long sections that revert into backstory rather than staying in what should be very exciting events in the present. Ultimately, the impression I took away is that the writer had imagined a series of heroes and villains and wanted to put them forth somehow, but didn’t have as clear an idea of an actual narrative in which to place them. This impression was definitely underscored by the seven page appendix at the end of the book cataloguing every hero and villain (as if this hadn’t been done sufficiently in the narrative itself) as well as a superhuman events timeline. Without an engaging story in the present of the book, or even any of the dark and witty humor/tone the book jacket seemed to imply would be present, I found little in this novel to latch onto.