Title Soon I Will Be Invincible Series --- Author Austin Grossman Cover Art --- Publisher Random House - 2007 First Printing Random House - 2007 Category Science Fiction Warnings None Main Characters Dr. Impossible, Fatale, Damsel, Blackwolf, Elphin, Mr. Mystic, CoreFire, Rainbow Triumph, Feral, Lily Main Elements Superheroes

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: 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. Fungus army. Army of fish. Of rodents. Alien invasions. 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 to be the next generation of warfare. Filling the void left by a slain former member, Fatale joins a team struggling with a damaged past, trying 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 the notions of power, glory, responsibility, and (of course) good and evil.

For the most part, this was a fun read, a kind of tongue-in-cheek superhero story. We watch all those Marvel and DC movies these days as an outside observer, but what if we could get into the heads of the most powerful supervillain, and the newest superhero on Earth? What will we learn about the day-to-day lives they live, they way they view the world, and that in the end, superpowers notwithstanding, they are as messed up as the rest of us.

There were moments of humour, moments for serious consideration, but overall it was just fun. I must admit I enjoyed the Dr. Impossible POV's more than those of Fatale, I mean an evil genius must have an interesting way of seeing the world while Fatale is basically just a human recently converted to a cyborg and struggling with her physical changes and her place in the world. In fact on the whole I was less interested in the superheroes, though why that should be I'm not sure, after all, though they chose the side of good, they all had such unpleasant experiences in life you wonder why they didn't just go hide away in some remote and lonely place or join the supervillains and take out their frustrations on those that treated them poorly. And Dr. Impossible wonders this too, what makes someone go one way or the other, and he's not sure himself. He does seem to realize that the supervillains are almost always supergeniuses, and that they also tend to spend most of their time in jail.

Grossman pokes fun at various cliches, like supervillains have to have superlairs, evil speeches and a maniacal laugh, everyone has an origin story whether they were bitten by a radioactive bug or got trained by some ancient mystical cult, or were simply aliens. We cover a little of everything, cyborgs, genetic manipulation, experiments that go wrong, and some of them are just born that way. We've even got a Batman, a regular human who is particularly athletic with some interesting gadgets but no actual powers. And each supervillain has his or her superhero nemesis (Dr. Impossible accidentally created his but he's kind of gone AWOL so that gives the Doctor the chance he's been looking for). We've even got cheezy costumes, Dr. Impossible often complaining about the awkwardness of his cape while still thinking he needs it to make a dramatic entrance.

But there are some unexpected twists, and not everyone is telling everyone else the truth, and that makes for an interesting enough story, I never got bored, though I sometimes wished to get back to Dr. Impossible after a long stretch with Fatale, but her bits are interesting too, being new to the superhero gig, she herself is trying to learn what goes on behind the scenes of the famous Champions, as she fills in the gaps in her knowledge she fills in those of the reader too.

I'd previously read “Professor Incognito Apologizes: An Itemized List" in the collection The Mad Scientist's Guide to World domination and enjoyed that one too (can be found for free online at Tor.com).