Soon I Will be Invincible

I had high hopes for Soon I Will be Invincible by Austin Grossman. I thought it could be fun to read a story written from the supervillain's point of view and it was highly recommended by my husband. It was written in first person and alternated between the villain and the hero points of view. I had trouble deciding if it was meant to be a parody or if it just fell short of its objective.

First, the superhero names were terrible. There were a few good ones but they were just bad on the whole. I know from watching the commentary on The Incredibles that coming up with a superhero name that is both cool and that hasn't been used before is tough but Fatale as the name of a cyborg is just bad. Damsel is not good, Blackwolf isn't bad and CoreFire would be better if it conformed to the rules of grammar. At least Doctor Impossible was passable as a supervillain moniker.

Second, Doctor Impossible. He's supposed to be a super genius. If you're a super genius it's probably not easy to speak as one which is why I feel that Grossman should have stayed away from the first person narrative he chose. The speech patterns of Doctor Impossible and Fatale (the other half of the narrative) were really much too similar. Also, as a super genius, that's his power. Being super-strong and super-tough just seemed unnecessary. The strength of the Superman/Lex Luthor nemesis pairing is that Luthor can't take a punch from Superman and has to find other ways to protect himself from the hero and find other ways to hurt him. The same couldn't really be said for the Doctor Impossible/CoreFire nemesis pairing. Doctor Impossible couldn't stand toe-to-toe in a fight with CoreFire but he could take a punch. I think a more talented writer could have done alot more with the story by having Doctor Impossible be more fragile. I will give him this though, Doctor Impossible knows how to monologue.

Third, the abandoned ideas. Grossman laid out ideas all over the place, some of them he tried to follow through to the end but most were just tossed out and left there. Fatale's origin was not satisfactorily resolved in my mind. There were other more interesting possibilities that could have made the story stronger and solved the super-genius problem of Doctor Impossible for me. There were two points in the story that I thought that a superhero gone bad would have led to a really interesting climax. There was the problem of Lily and the problem of Elphin.

Finally, the climax really just didn't do it for me. It was sort of a deus ex machina x 2. Sure, it's a superhero book and there will be god-like beings. That doesn't mean that they have to be used like gods.

In the end, while it was an enjoyable read for the most part, I have to say I was disappointed with Soon I Will be Invincible and can only give it a 3.