Soon I Will Be Invincible Book

The temperature went on rising. Spiderweb cracks formed on the glass of the containment chamber an instant before the explosion. The pain was like burning or drowning, and it went on and on, unbearable. I wanted to faint, to leave my body. When you can't bear something but it goes on anyway, the person who survives isn't you anymore; you've changed and become someone else, a new person, the one who did bear it all. The formula saturated my body, and I changed.

This is one my all-time favorite books.

Trapped in prison after his 12th attempt to take over the world, evil genius and super-villain Dr. Impossible is wondering if he'll ever escape. Can he once again create a brilliant and amazing plan to make the Earth's populace bow down before him?

I'm the smartest man in the world. Once I wore a cape in public, and fought battles against men who could fly, who had metal skin, who could kill you with their eyes. I fought CoreFire to a standstill, and the Super Squadron, and the Champions. Now I have to shuffle through a cafeteria line with men who tried to pass bad checks. Now I have to wonder if there will be chocolate milk in the dispenser. And whether the smartest man in the world has done the smartest thing he could with his life.
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This takes place in an exciting world of superheroes, a world that might exist in a comic book. People routinely obtain superpowers from alien technology, fairy or god intervention, chemical accidents, and genetic experimentation.

This book is told from two alternating points of view: that of Doctor Impossible and that of budding new superhero Fatale, a cyborg who used to work for the NSA fighting drug lords before she got invited to join the New Champions.

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The book itself is physically beautiful: the cover and the inside. Each chapter is marked with either a little ray gun (Impossible's chapters) or a little cyborg eye (Fatale's chapters). The book is also divided into three parts, each marked with a full page black and white superhero-type photograph. I loved this.

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The prose and writing is beautiful and truthful. This book is very powerful, it hits you full on and never relents.

If you're different you always know it, and you can't fix it even if you want to. What do you do when you find out your heart is the wrong kind? You take what you're given, and be the hero you can be. Hero to your own cold, inverted heart.

Grossman is also smart and weaves an amazingly intricate story here. I've read this book three times and even upon the third reading I was discovering and picking up on new things that eluded me the first two times.

This is NOT sci-fi, it's fantasy, so don't expect any hard science here. It's all death-rays, and zeta beams, and alternate dimensions and stuff.

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I can't believe the psychology and humanity that Grossman manages to fit into this book. He coaxes out the intricacies of why people choose to do good or evil. Doctor Impossible is not just a one-dimensional villain, and his choice to embrace darkness is the result of a lot of different factors that sounded very familiar and true to me. We are in Impossible's head and able to know his thoughts and his past - and in knowing him so intimately we become aligned and sympathetic to him - even more so since things never seem to go his way.

I won't talk to much about what happens in the book, because I don't want to give anything away - half the fun is piecing it all together. Grossman didn't skimp on the intricacies and delicacies of plotting. You'll be going "Ah-ha!" when different pieces to the puzzle emerge and you put something together that wasn't clear before. It's really masterful.
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Another thing that I think Grossman does insanely well is the balance he makes between the glossy-candy part of the comic book world and the gritty, grim underside.

Fatale is experiencing the high-class, expensive, flashy world of the superheroes.

Being this close to so much power is a vertiginous sensation. The heroes pop out at you, impossibly vivid, colorful as playing cards but all from different decks, a jumble of incompatible suits and denominations dealt out for an Alice in Wonderland game. A man with the head of a tiger sits next to a woman made of glass. The woman to my right has wings. This is where I want to be - the players.

She and the other superheroes move through a world that adores, idolizes, and complies with them.

Damsel and I pass the first perimeter - she flashes some identification at the policemen on the barricades, who stare at our costumes as if we were brightly colored poisonous fish.

But beneath all that glamour lies ugly truths, open wounds, and anguished pasts. All the superheroes seemingly perfect, God-touched lives have some open and sometimes festering wounds underneath.

The villains are just as complex - and a lot of the book is spent in dumpsters, motel rooms, and sewers. This is the modern real world - but a world where some people can fly and see through walls, or generate force fields or summon lightning.

I love the juxtaposition of grimy and glossy that Grossman does so perfectly here.

He hits me again, and this time I almost feel it. It's been a long time since I felt much of anything.
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What else? Grossman has a great vocabulary. I love learning new words and he did not disappoint. I mean, he's no Donna Tartt - the book is pretty accessible, but he slips some gems in there and I loved it.
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The chapter titles are so much fun. "Foiled Again" and "Enemy of my Enemy" and "Maybe We Are Not So Different, You and I" are just a few examples.

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If you like comic books, this is the book for you.

If you don't read comic books - I'm with you. I am not a comic-book-reader. But I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED this book and that means that you might, too. You don't need to be a comic book fanatic to understand or enjoy this novel.

I have a therapist here [in prison], "Steve," a sad Rogerian I'm taken to see twice a week in a disused classroom. "Do you feel angry?" "What did you REALLY want to steal?" The things I could tell him - secrets of the universe! But he wants to know about my childhood. I try to relax and remind myself of my situation - if I kill him, they'll just send another.
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MEDIA THAT RELATES TO THIS NOVEL:

MOVIES:

Megamind

Hancock

Despicable Me 1 and 2

Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog

Mystery Men

Sky High

Kick-Ass 1 and 2

My Super Ex-Girlfriend

Special (2006)

Watchmen

Big Hero 6

Unbreakable / Split / Glass

Any traditional Marvel or DC film. I won't list them.

BOOKS:

Attack of the Mutant

Any superhero comic book, I won't list them.
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But I want to add in here that this book has a serious, adult tone to it. It is not a joke - although it is frequently laugh-out-loud funny. But instead of mocking or poking fun at superhero/supervillain clichés, Grossman is playing it pretty straight. He takes this opportunity and backdrop to really explore human feelings and psychology. It's fun, it's thought-provoking, and it's emotional - there's a deep vein of sadness and despair that counteracts the silliness and wit that Grossman glosses this with. I loved every minute of it and can't recommend it highly enough.

Why is it always like this? I'd forgotten about this stuff. Let myself get complacent. Images of Peterson get confused with the present day. In another room with a tiled floor, they stand around jeering while I face the urinal. I leave, face blank, in a trance of shame. Somewhere in that darkness, I wedded myself eternally to science and genius and anger. How had I forgotten that?

Not as dark as something like Watchmen, but not as light as traditional comic book fare, I think this book achieved the perfect balance in a way I haven't seen before.
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All my life, I'd been waiting for something to happen to me, and now, before I was ready for it, it was. I saw the misadjusted dials and whirling gauges and the bubbling green fluid and electricity arcing around, and a story laid out for me, my sorry self alchemically transmuted into power and robots and fortresses and orbital platforms and costumes and alien kings. I was going to declare war on the world, and I was going to lose.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

- Alexandr Solzhenitsyn