Review: Soon I Will Be Invincible

"Soon I Will Be Invincible" is a book I started reading in Australia. I was almost finished with it by the time I left Australia, a scarce three days later. It was an incredibly fast and fun read.

The book takes place in an alternate America in which there are superheroes and supervillains. The story is told from the alternating perspectives of two of these: the cybernetic superheroine Fatale and the supervillainous Doctor Impossible. Although Fatale is an interesting and complex character, it is Doctor Impossible who steals the show. As literally the most intelligent man on the planet, he finds himself quite alone. It's hard to not be evil when you feel so alienated from those around you. It is his alienation that makes him so sympathetic, as it shows him as a flawed being that merely wants to be extraordinary, but feels shunned for his extraordinariness. His down-to-earth and self-aware inner monologues (especially when compared to his over-the-top external pronouncements) also make him an oddly sympathetic character, despite his unrepentant desire to bend the world to his will.

The story concerns two unconnected events: the disappearance of the most powerful superhero in the world, CoreFire (roughly equivalent to Superman), and Doctor Impossible's breaking out of prison and setting into motion his latest plan to conquer the world. To deal with both problems the Champions, a superhero team that broke up several years before the story starts, is reassembled. The team includes new recruits including Fatale, a woman who became a cyborg after a horrible accident in Brazil who remembers nothing of her previous life. Just as Doctor Impossible is more complicated than he appears, so are the Champions: they are flawed, contrary and fully three-dimensional characters. This book also doesn't resort to the infamous crutch of the comics it's based on in miring the characters in either unnecessary moral greyness or angst: they may be complicated people, but they're not gratuitously violent and cruel just because it makes them "deep."

As I said, the story is told in alternating chapters: first a chapter from Doctor Impossible's perspective, then one from Fatale's. Often chapter titles (especially Impsosible's) are taken from cliche lines from comic books, including "Join Me and We Cannot Be Defeated," "My Master Plan Unfolds," and "Maybe We Are Not So Different, You and I." Occasionally the author, Austin Grossman, plays around with this gimmick in interesting ways; for instance at least once a Fatale chapter happens before the Doctor Impossible chapter that preceded it. This switching back and forth also allows for interesting character exploration: for instance many of the Champions severely underestimate Doctor Impossible, thinkinbg of him as some sort of harmless hack, even though the reader knows very well how dangerous he is.

In the edition I purchased, there is an insert with fake comic book covers depicting characters and events in the story. This really helped the comic book feel of the book. A lot of the characters in the book are versions of famous Marvel and DC characters, and it is very clear that Grossman loves his superhero comics. The book is packed with references to a long and complicated continuity of superheroes and supervillains as complicated as the universes of the Big Two of comics. This made the world of the book seem incredibly real and interesting. I really want to learn more about events and characters only referenced occasionally.

Except for some occasional plot confusions (for instance Regina's backstory and the encounter between Doctor Impossible and Mister Mystic) that for me made no sense (I felt like I was missing something), I really liked this book, and I eagerly await the next book by this author, whether or not it's set in the same setting as this (although I hope it is).