Soon I Will Be Invincible

A Novel

De: Austin Grossman

Narrado por: Coleen Marlo, Paul Boehmer

Doctor Impossible, evil genius, diabolical scientist, wannabe world dominator, languishes in a federal detention facility. He's lost his freedom, his girlfriend, and his hidden island fortress.

Over the years, he's tried to take over the world in every way imaginable, using doomsday devices of all varieties (nuclear, thermonuclear, nanotechnological) and mass mind control. He's traveled backwards in time to change history, forward in time to escape it. He's commanded robot armies, insect armies, and dinosaur armies. A fungus army. An army of fish. Of rodents. Aliens. All failures. But not this time. This time it's going to be different.

Fatale is a rookie superhero on her first day with the Champions, the world's most famous superteam. She's a patchwork woman of skin and chrome, a gleaming technological marvel built for the next generation of warfare. Filling the void left by a slain former member, we watch as Fatale joins a team struggling with a damaged past, having to come together in the face of unthinkable evil.

Soon I Will Be Invincible is a thrilling first novel, a fantastical adventure that gives new meaning to notions of power, glory, responsibility, and (of course) good and evil.

©2007 Austin Grossman (P)2007 HighBridge Company

Reseñas de la Crítica

"The realm of comic book heroes and villains gets a dose of realism in this whimsical debut....Grossman dabbles in a host of themes - power, greed, fame, the pitfalls of ego...broadening the appeal of an already inviting scenario." ( Publishers Weekly)

"Austin Grossman has a superpower himself - it's called writing. This book is a new, winning, smart and funny way of interpreting our world. It's terrific." (Douglas Coupland)

A fun listen

I listened to this book on a recent road trip with my sister. Unlike most Audiobooks, this one was more fun to listen to with someone else than alone (although it would still be fun alone). We had a great time picking out phrases and scenes from the story to discuss, repeat, and joke about later.

The voices were very well done, true to the "comic book" feel of the story, without being overdone. My favourite character was the super-villain, and I found myself anticipating his "turn" throughout the story.

Fun!

This book was fun. Grossman does a great job humanizing the superheroes and villains. It's great getting the characters inner thoughts as they're getting thrown through walls or trying to impress the others (usually to no avail). The narrators do a great job as well.

What fun!

What a great idea! It is action packed, clever and very funny at times. The characters are great, as are their relationships. The narrators do a great job. I think this may be one of the most fun things I have ever read. Bravo!

What a great performance!

I enjoyed the story, but loved the performance. Really well done, and I lost sleep because I couldn't stop listening.

Fantastic

As someone who aspires to be an evil genius one day I can say this book is fantastic resource material. If only I could get my mind control device working again...

An amazing anti hero story that has you cheering all the characters and keeps you guessing until the end

The story is extremely well narrated and enjoyable.
Dr impossible, Core-Fire, and the team will remind you of other classic comic characters that make this story easy to relate to and all the more enjoyable.

Just so.... ok

I couldn't get into it. It was just so lackluster. You can tell that, to a certain degree, Soon I will Be Invincible was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. After all, it is part of the super hero genre, which is probably one of the goofiest genres to consume. However, the book always seemed to take itself so freakin seriously. This would be fine if the book had a strong enough cast and interesting enough plot and enough originality to carry that tone. But, in my opinion, it didn't and thus was never goofy enough. By trying so hard for realism, the book fails at being very entertaining satire and ends up falling into the unhappy medium of just sort of being... well, a little boring.

The characters and storytelling methods also suffer from this sort of problem. The author seems to want the entire cast to be fully fleshed out characters, complete with interpersonal relationships and interesting backstory. This is a noble goal, of course. But then we are stuck listening to crap tons of long-winded backstory that is fleshed out too thin for me to feel like I really got to know any of the cast other than Impossible and Fatale. (and maybe Elphin and Damsel. Though, they could have still been fleshed out so much better. And Elphin in particular felt so out of place in a serious story so set on trying for realism, at least to me. That's another story though.) Nevertheless, the copious amounts of backstory rarely bothered to advance the plot, even when the backstory was for one of our POV characters. Large sections just felt like nothing was happening in present time because we had to spend so much time with this backtracking. It simply didn't work for me.

That's not to say it was terrible. It was just mildly interesting at best. So no regrets, but I'll never re-listen to it or purposely go out of my way to purchase another book by this author.

Great fun and well narrated

I was very surprised at how fast the author "hooked" me and how loathe I was to put it down and get back to work. A novel of Super Heroes and Vilians with a human & humorous twist. The Super Heros are interesting but it's the life of the Super Vilians, as glimpsed through the mind of Dr. Impossible, that caught my imagination. What does it feel like to loose, again, in a super fight? What drives a genius to viliany and where does he get the money for his fancy lairs? What do villians do in ther spare time? I found myself laughing out loud in several places and sounding like an idiot trying to explain some of the funnier bits to my ever-patient wife.

Best Supervillan/Superhero Novel Ever

I grew up as a child reading comic books in the 60's and 70's as my favorite past time. A local store owner would tear off the front cover and sell us all the comic books we wanted for 5 cents. I would spend all day collecting beer bottles from trash cans and sell them for my comic book reading habit. Oh the wonderful memories of Spiderman, Batman, Superman, and my favorite Dr. Fate. Watching them fight evil and living mixed up and confusing lives just like mine. This novel brings back some wonderful memories as they describe so many different superheros and supervillians. I must confess I am a supervillian fan and enjoy Paul Boehmer's rendition of Doctor Impossible. His voice is fantastic and he is very dramatic and make you feel he is really his character. I'm actually going to search and see what other books he has narrated on Audible to hear more of him. I hope we get more novels from Austin Grossman. This is one of the best novels I have read. Collen Marlo was also excellent in her narration, but Paul brings down the house as they say. You will not be bored listening to this wonderful novel of Supervillians and Superheros.

Exactly what you think it is.

Okay, so if you're familiar with super hero tropes and genre clichés... This is a book of them.
There's no twist. There's no interesting character development that questions the status quo of these stories.
These are barley 2 dimensional characters that you've seen before (but with the serial numbers filed off) doing things you've seen before, and saying lines you've read before.

It's fun but... not worth going out of your way for.