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    Soon I Will Be Invincible
    Soon I Will Be Invincible
    Soon I Will Be Invincible
    Audiobook10 hours

    Soon I Will Be Invincible

    Written by Austin Grossman

    Narrated by Paul Boehmer and Coleen Marlo

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Soon I Will Be Invincible takes the fantastic genre of comic book adventure on an amazing literary ride as it explores power, celebrity, glory, responsibility, and-of course-good and evil.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateJun 5, 2007
    ISBN9781598875027
    Soon I Will Be Invincible

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    Reviews for Soon I Will Be Invincible

    3.5/5

    769 ratings78 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Loved the idea of the book, liked the execution.

      I really wanted Doctor Impossible to find a new path. Something to get him out of his rut, to let go of his hate, to get out of the hero-villain dynamic. Oh well.
    • 3/5
      This is the story of a once defunct super squad that reforms to take on their greatest nemesis, Dr. Impossible. The impetus for their reformation is the disappearance of the team's most legendary member, Corefire. The rivalry between Dr. Impossible and Corefire is legendary, surely the madman had something to do with it even though he was locked up. The Dr.'s sudden escape seems to only confirm their suspicions. Just where is Dr. Impossible? And what master plan is he about to unleash upon the world?Switching back and forth between the perspectives of the Champion's newest member, Fatale, and the Dr. himself, this story is charming, contemplative, and ultimately satisfying. I really enjoyed this book, but I honestly expected more innovation in the plot. While the Dr.'s rambling monologues are traditional, his character is really too cliche. I expected this book to break more new ground than it did. It's still fun, and for people who like the Incredibles or Watchmen, this book will certainly remind you of both.
    • 3/5
      This one was fun, but it had its weaknesses. The narrative goes back and forth between Doctor Impossible, a super villain, and Fatale, the newest member of a superhero group. The Doctor Impossible chapters were an interesting look into the mind of an evil scientist, but Fatale's chapters felt a little too much like wish-fulfillment YA fanfic. I also thought that there were far too many flashbacks and exposition about the history of the characters, and I would have rather seen more action taking place in the present.But like I said, it was fun, and it goes by very quickly. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for something light and enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      I'm so on the fence about this one, it's not even funny. Do I love it? Do I hate it? I'm not sure. I do love the book design though, I'll start on a positive. Take a look at that cover. I dare you not to love it.This is the story of the infamous villain Doctor Impossible as he plays out another scheme to control the Earth. Odd-numbered chapters are told from his perspective and are absolutely riveting, while even-numbered chapters are told by Fatale, a cyborg superhero on the team that's trying to track him down. Her chapters are flat and boring.Literary novels like this are like watching train wrecks in SLOW MOTION. I have a feeling that it's not going to have a satisfying ending, just literary claptrap in which we all see how terrible the illness or social issue or dog dying is, but there's no resolution or hope or even much conflict, just exploring the issue. Things take forever to happen and all it is is long internal monologuing about the angst of it all. And yet, you can't look away.Doctor Impossible was the reason I sat through the boredom. I lived for his chapters. He's the only sympathetic character in the book, and although I think that was the point, it didn't endear me to the other half of the story. Doctor Impossible was witty, intelligent, brave... "Savvy" is the word. He knows the story is going to play out exactly like it always has and nothing's going to change, but he keeps on trying, he never gives up.All the heroes were boring, flat, and annoying, and it was like pulling teeth just to sit through their scenes. They tried to work up some mystique and suspense, but I just didn't care, with the possible exception of Blackwolf (a Captain Ersatz of Batman, so I had to like him) and Mister Mystic (who got just enough attention to make me want more, but not enough for me to know if I actually liked him.)SPOILER ALERT:The heroes don't do much but complain and fight amongst themselves, but somehow they still beat Doctor Impossible. It's just not fair.END SPOILERSReally, I just don't know. I was frustrated and enrapt for equal parts. If this sounds remotely like something you might potentially be interested in, read it, think about it, let me know what you decide. Most of the reviews I've read really haven't understood what the book was trying to say any more than I did, and some of them are just mistaken. It's not a parody of superhero literature by any means.
    • 3/5
      The theme of villains vs. heroes was an intriguing one. What is evil, and where is the line, really, between good and bad? The narration switches between one of the superhero's POV and the evil genius'. The plot was pretty straighforward, as were the characters themselves, and in the end, this kept the book from being as interesting as it had potential to be. I kept wanting something slightly more exciting or unexpected to happen. So, I quite enjoyed it, but I have a feeling I will also forget about it soon enough.
    • 5/5
      Great fun with superhero - villain tropes. I really felt for the characters too. Well written and good narrators.
    • 4/5

      I enjoyed this book a lot, but I think I would have preferred it to be all from the villain's point of view rather than the back-and-forth between the villain and one of the heroes. Also, it was in need of some editing, because there were things that were repeated for no reason, and things that were "revealed" after we already knew about them.
    • 3/5
      I would say this book is good enough. I was hoping that it would play with form, being a novel instead of a comic. Instead it's a descent story but nothing that hadn't been done before. Not bad but underwhelming.
    • 3/5
      Fun to read, _Soon I Will be Invincible_ captured the flavor of reading a comic book. For my husband, who *got* all of the winking nods to four-color heroes, it was even more fun. It was light, though, like it would be printed on newsprint and never bound into a graphic novel. I wish I could have related better to Fatale, the other POV character. I know she's half cyborg, and I know she's a comic book hero, but I still wanted her to have more humanity and more depth. If Fatale could have been as Zap-Pow colorful as Doctor Impossible, I would have loved this book. As it is, it was a nice vacation between the programming and economics books.
    • 5/5
      loved it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    • 4/5
      A good comic book pastiche whose high points are the attempts to make the mad scientist supervillain psychologically plausible. The other half of the narration, by an upcoming superhero, doesn't work as well, and there are occasional overexplanations, but in general the book succeeds at what it's trying to do.
    • 3/5
      Solid world building of superheroes and super villains in a classic take over the world tale told from two alternating POV.
    • 3/5
      I think this is probably only the second novel I've read about superheroes. I read comics every day, but I was never that excited about reading prose about superheroes. This was fun and sometimes brilliant, but also sometimes boring for me. It definitely had a "Despicable Me" vibe, just not as silly. I loved the insight into the "criminal mind".
    • 3/5
      Lots of reviews here already, so I'll just add that this book was incredibly good at times, and incredibly inconsistent at others. It feels as though Grossman revised this text so many times that he himself lost track of all the loose ends and history. While much of it is enjoyable, especially the alternating chapters between supervillain and superheroine, it was ultimately a disappointment.
    • 3/5
      This is a stylish fantasy of superheroes and supervillains struggling to do what they always need to do once they have chosen up sides. The obvious inconsistencies play a lesser role than the personalities making them do what they do. It is a fun listen told in an amusing manner. Not all the punches land but enough do to make it worth the while.
    • 3/5
      Fun idea, a little thin in the execution.
    • 3/5
      The superpower elements were fun. Some of the characters, although mostly lightweight, were well-drawn. I dig the approach to the timeline - there's a primary plot that's relatively straightforward, but is frequently punctuated with detours into the past to flesh things out.And yet - doesn't quite come together as a solid sum of its parts. Maybe it has to do with pop culture's complete saturation with superhero stories since this book's pub date of 2007. Maybe it's a little overstuffed with ideas, which renders some of the more serious subjects as perfunctory. If you're into the genre - definitely read! You will enjoy it!For anyone else - skip it.
    • 3/5
      Satirizes comic heroes while playing out a comic book plot in a straightforward but self-aware way. Probably the cleverest lampshade was on Batman/Blackwolf.

      There was a continuous problem in this novel of scenes jumping unexpectedly, or dialog getting tangled up in characters. I feel like there were a few times something was implied or outright stated, only to be contradicted later. (Same character's telling, so that's not the difference.) I was hoping for an unreliable narrator scenario, or to go full-out with comic-style reboot/retcon.

      Doctor Impossible is sort of sympathetic, but mostly the stereotypical kind of entitled creep who grows up from an ignored/bullied uncool kid whose self-esteem issues slide all the way back around to arrogant, indignant entitlement. He stays in a villain plot cycle.

      The other narrator, Fatale, gets some kind of closure near the end, but I don't think it was really earned. She gets documentation on her enhancements, but other issues persist. I guess it's not so much an ending as a new beginning for her. Idk
    • 4/5
      A very entertaining book that takes place in a world of superheroes and supervillians, where every notion you ever read in a comic book was actually true. The book follows the perspectives of two characters, Doctor Impossible, the evil genius from Iowa who tries to conquer the world repeatedly, and that of Fatale, the female cyborg with no memory of her past trying to come to grips with finding herself amongst the greatest of superheroes.

      It's a wonderfully fun book, and the author has a delightful sense of humor that enjoys playing with, but never mocking, the material.
    • 4/5
      I'm not generally in to superhero stories, but this was pretty good. The first half was really slow, but the second half was worth it.
    • 5/5
      EXTREMELY well written. One of the things that impressed me was that Grossman gives you all this backstory about the characters, and this world, without boring you to tears. In addition, he's created a world where - many things are like the real world... but many are not (more difficult, I think, than where it's all different)... and it all seems very natural and understandable.
      I believe this is his only book.. which is unfortunate. I'd like to read more.
    • 3/5
      I wasn't supposed to check anything out at the library. (How often do these entries start out this way?) Well, I was only supposed to be checking out a movie for movie night, when it occurred to me that after all this time, I'd never been in the library's fiction section. I wandered over there and of course ended up checking out two books, even after I'd just been lecturing myself on not meeting my 2013 goals for reading from my to-read shelf. Ooops. But I'd been meaning to read this book for over a year since I'd met Austin in Austin and someone (Penny? Dad?) had grabbed the last copy of Invincible from the shelf at Book People. That should count for something, right?

      Invincible was good, but I kept wanting it to reach just a tiny bit farther for greatness. It is a novel of superheroes and villains driven by real people problems. A common enough theme in comics, but the novel format allows for more introspection. The characters were interesting, but so dry that I never had enough empathy for them for the book to really get its hooks into me.

      Grossman's next book is still on my to-read list. I want to see where he goes from here.
    • 3/5
      I read this in ARC and it was a fun read and a definitely solid first novel. While I enjoyed the time spent alternating between the heads of the reluctant hero and the megalomaniacal supervillain, its structure was a lot of build-up and not as much punch as one might want out of the climax. Still, with all the world building and the interesting character bits in this book, it's forgiveable. Still, very solid and enough to make me look for this author's next book.

      SES
    • 2/5
      This book seemed to have promise and had a very unique premise and one of the two main characters is pretty cool, but the other main character is so bland and boring that you wonder what happened to the author while he was writing her into the text. Furthermore, most of the other characters, and certainly her peers, are equally as boring and bland, so this book fails in its attempt at a campy "sci fi" (yeah, right), fantasy, comic book, literary fiction novel and it's a big let down.We begin the book with Doctor Impossible, an evil genius in prison for trying to take over the world some 11 times or so. His descriptions and reflections on his upbringing and his criminal efforts are generally pretty creative and pretty hilarious. He makes the book.Then you switch to Fatale, a female rookie cyborg "hero" who has just been asked to join the newly reformed superhero group, Champions, and she wants to impress enough to show she fits in. But she really doesn't. She really doesn't have a clue. Or a personality. And neither do the bickering other heroes.I probably should have kept reading as the book still had possibilities, but I had read the reviews and they pretty much confirmed what I had already guessed -- that this book, loved by some, is largely dead on arrival, aside from Doctor Impossible. And frankly, the author -- at the time of this writing -- was a doctoral student at Cal. That means he was writing "literary fiction" while trying to dress it up as stylized genre fiction. Uh huh. No. Doesn't work. Still retains some of the aspects of standard academic-speak. Which I hate. Which is why I read Bukowski and Kerouac for my main fiction and sci fi for my genre fiction. I didn't finish this book, didn't even get far. I was annoyed with all of the characters except for Doctor Impossible and I was annoyed with the author's peculiar use of certain words and phrases. It seemed linguistically wrong. I probably should give this book three stars, because it is highly original, but as I didn't finish it because I found most of it boring and pretentious, I'm giving it two stars. Not recommended.
    • 3/5
      Why do some metahumans end up Superheroes -- fighting for good, and why do some become Supervillains and fight the Superheroes? Doctor Impossible is "the smartest man in the World". He is an evil genius who has been in jail 12 times. When he escapes again (he always escapes) he has a new plan to take over the world. And this time it will be different...
    • 5/5
      I just loved this book.
    • 1/5
      This didn't grab me. I got a little way into it and realised I was looking at other audiobooks to read or not listening to this when I would normally listen to my audiobook. The person who recommended it suggested it was because I didn't quite get what they were trying to do with the comic hero tropes but honestly, the writing didn't really grab me either - it was very inconsistent in style and the narrative voice jumped all over the place. I'm sad I didn't get into the meaty "what makes a hero" themes, but overall I just wasn't compelled to keep going with this. I've abandoned it in favour of the other things I kept graivtating towards while I should have been reading this.
    • 3/5
      Another reminder that my husband laughing hysterically at a book won't mean I find it funny, or even particularly like it. I complained to him it was derivative. He said it was purposely derivative. I said it was still tediously boring. He raised an eyebrow at me. I went and ate a cupcake. So all's well that ends well I guess, but still, perhaps don't read this book unless you're into superheroes and the whole Marvel/DC Comics universes.
    • 4/5
      Very well read comic book from two points of view that of Dr. Impossible, the super villain, & a young super hero in alternate chapters. The voice of Dr. Impossible is especially good. Instead of avoiding tropes, this book embraces them all, gives us the origins & motivations of each with a fairly twisty ending including a real shocker, but one that made sense. It was a lot of fun & perfect in this format. I don't think it would have read as well in paper, even graphic format, for me.
    • 5/5
      It was hard for me to rate this book. It's written in choppy little bits, but does well for itself. The real thing is that it made me sad. The writing provokes an emotional response, and it's surprising to me that I like the book, because the response wasn't excitement or a thrill or intrigue, but melancholy and sadness. This is a very well-written book.

      As usual, I didn't care for the swearing. I wish he'd developed some of the characters further, or made room for a sequel. This is an author to keep an eye on.

      Alicia, thanks for loaning me the book.