Book review
Written by Austin Grossman
Pantheon Books hardback
Release date 5 June 2007 (US)

In an alternate universe the supervillain and evil genius Doctor Impossible plots his next grand scheme to rule the world. Corefire, the only superhero able to stand against him is missing, but the superhero team the Champions are reforming anyway, along with new member – the cyborg Fatale…

Soon I Will Be Invincible is really typical comic book fare, with a fairly straightforward (and quite slight) good versus evil plot. You might well wonder then why it isn’t actually a comic book series. Grossman has adopted the novel form as he clearly wants to really get inside the minds of his supervillain and new superhero. And here’s the rub – to do this he adopts the first person narrative style, alternating chapters between the ‘I’ of Doctor Impossible and the ‘I’ of Fatale.

Now, first person narrative can work well, but here this particular conceit palls after a while. Not because of the constant flip-flopping of narrative viewpoint so much as the constantly frustrated desire to get inside the heads of the other (extremely intriguing) characters that an omnipotent voice would permit.

Nevertheless, Grossman clearly loves the superhero-supervillain conflict of the classic comic book and has invented an absorbing, if not particularly original, new metahuman ecology (including such ailments as Malign Hypercognition Disorder). He is also an intelligent writer, and he pulls off the narrative suspense and intrigue well enough to make this is a compelling read overall. Brigid Cherry

VERDICT: 6/10
A brave attempt at something different in the superhero genre.