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The Impossible
When Hector Coleman and his mates genetically mutate overnight, his life changes in impossible ways.
A comic-book inspired adventure with a graphic novel twist for fans of Joe Cowley, Joe Sugg and Charlie Higson
Hector Coleman. Just your average angst-ridden teenager, living a normal rubbish life in a normal rubbish town with, let's face it, a rubbish name. Until his mates start genetically mutating ... and everything changes. Apart from his name. And his girl trouble. And his embarrassingly low number of Twitter followers. All those things, unfortunately, stay the same
A comic-book inspired adventure with a graphic novel twist for fans of Joe Cowley, Joe Sugg and Charlie Higson
Hector Coleman. Just your average angst-ridden teenager, living a normal rubbish life in a normal rubbish town with, let's face it, a rubbish name. Until his mates start genetically mutating ... and everything changes. Apart from his name. And his girl trouble. And his embarrassingly low number of Twitter followers. All those things, unfortunately, stay the same
384 pages, Paperback
Published July 27, 2017
13 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 16, 2017
In this book the impossible happens. The question is why?
First thing to say is that I was disappointed when I got this book. The description said it was “a comic-book-inspired adventure with a graphic-novel twist” but it is barely graphic novel/comic book at all. There are 9 pages with illustrations on them (admittedly in the comic book style) out of 282 (which doesn’t match the Amazon page count either). That is about 3% of pages. The rest is normal novel.
Still after my initial disappointment I read and got into it. The story follows 15-year-old Hector Coleman, resident of Gilpin, a small town, “the geographical centre of the UK”, famed for a massive storm a few hundred years ago with lots of lightning and people dying.
Hector has a stalker, a strange “old balding guy in brown leather jacket, white T-shirt”. When it is revealed who this guy is the whole book takes off and draws you in. There is so much mystery and intrigue which runs through right to the end before the loose ends are all tied up.
“We’re living in a science fiction film… but today it turned into a horror film” is how Hector describes events at one point, because the impossible is happened in, and only in, Gilpin, and only to teenagers. (To describe what the impossible is would spoil the surprises.)
The book ends with, “The impossible should never happen even once, obviously. So there’s definitely no way it could happen twice. Right?” That leads us nicely on to the second book in the series, due to be published in 2018. With the sequel I think it would be hard to repeat the element of surprise of this one if events were to repeat but in the meantime I have enjoyed this one immensely.
First thing to say is that I was disappointed when I got this book. The description said it was “a comic-book-inspired adventure with a graphic-novel twist” but it is barely graphic novel/comic book at all. There are 9 pages with illustrations on them (admittedly in the comic book style) out of 282 (which doesn’t match the Amazon page count either). That is about 3% of pages. The rest is normal novel.
Still after my initial disappointment I read and got into it. The story follows 15-year-old Hector Coleman, resident of Gilpin, a small town, “the geographical centre of the UK”, famed for a massive storm a few hundred years ago with lots of lightning and people dying.
Hector has a stalker, a strange “old balding guy in brown leather jacket, white T-shirt”. When it is revealed who this guy is the whole book takes off and draws you in. There is so much mystery and intrigue which runs through right to the end before the loose ends are all tied up.
“We’re living in a science fiction film… but today it turned into a horror film” is how Hector describes events at one point, because the impossible is happened in, and only in, Gilpin, and only to teenagers. (To describe what the impossible is would spoil the surprises.)
The book ends with, “The impossible should never happen even once, obviously. So there’s definitely no way it could happen twice. Right?” That leads us nicely on to the second book in the series, due to be published in 2018. With the sequel I think it would be hard to repeat the element of surprise of this one if events were to repeat but in the meantime I have enjoyed this one immensely.
April 25, 2018
This book was down right weird... but kinda wonderful!!
It follows the story of 15 year-old Hector Coleman, who’s life is about to get a whole lot impossible.
This novel is marketed as a comic book inspired adventure with a graphic novel twist, and I picked up this book thinking I’d give it a try, as it wasn’t really like anything I’d ever read, as I am not a huge graphic-novel fan, but it turns out there was little to none illustrations. On the upside, when the rare illustration did appear it was brilliantly done and the plot made up for the missing graphics. Overall this was a face paced, light hearted read that will boggle your mind 😋
It follows the story of 15 year-old Hector Coleman, who’s life is about to get a whole lot impossible.
This novel is marketed as a comic book inspired adventure with a graphic novel twist, and I picked up this book thinking I’d give it a try, as it wasn’t really like anything I’d ever read, as I am not a huge graphic-novel fan, but it turns out there was little to none illustrations. On the upside, when the rare illustration did appear it was brilliantly done and the plot made up for the missing graphics. Overall this was a face paced, light hearted read that will boggle your mind 😋
December 7, 2017
Mark Illis’s YA novel (with illustrations by Bimpe Alliu) is a so-so take on superhero fiction in that it has some interesting ideas but the characters were a little cookie cutter (although I believed in Hector’s relationship with Jason) and bland, the plot lacked urgency and pace and the “graphic-novel twist” unfortunately added little to the text because there simply aren’t enough of them to be meaningful.
March 20, 2018
An easy read, the comic book style was interesting however maybe a little sparse with only one comic book spread every few chapters. The concept of teenagers infected with 'superpowers' in a small, sleepy English village, and the panic and chaos that follows, was gripping if not a little familiar in YA of recent times. I perhaps enjoyed the ending most, the way loose ends were tied and questions answered, but then a little opening left for a possible sequel?
May 16, 2022
Meh. This book had lots of potential, but it fell flat in the end.
The story starts in Gilpin, a a small, boring English town, and hones in on 4 teens: Hector, the narrator, Asha, the cool girl, Grace, the shy one and Josh, who is depressed. It's the end of summer and Hector's brother Jason suggests breaking into his friend Max's house (for some strange reason). Apparently Max has been mysteriously absent for a while. So they do that and find Max's whole family missing and something locked in the basement. After they run away, strange things start happening all over town and teenagers mutate in extremely weird ways. What is going on??
Firstly, I really didn't like the writing style. It is obvious it's the author, Mark Illis' first book- the writing was very clunky and didn't flow well. It lacked finesse and didn't hold my interest, so I wasn't invested in the story at all.
The plot was also messy. Despite being a very short book, it crawled along at a snail's pave with very little action to make it interesting. The direction of the story also just wasn't to my taste. And I thought the climax was VERY anticlimactic and was resolved far too easily.
I didn't really like the characters. They were a bit unbelievable and their relationships with the other characters weren't very realistic. Although they were supposed to be teens banding together to solve this big problem, their friendship didn't really develop at all.
AND THE ROMANCE. Ugh. It would've been FAR better if it'd been left out.
Not quite bad enough for one star, but still NOT good. I'm really disappointed in the end. :( Sadly, it didn't work for me, so I won't be looking out for the sequel.
The story starts in Gilpin, a a small, boring English town, and hones in on 4 teens: Hector, the narrator, Asha, the cool girl, Grace, the shy one and Josh, who is depressed. It's the end of summer and Hector's brother Jason suggests breaking into his friend Max's house (for some strange reason). Apparently Max has been mysteriously absent for a while. So they do that and find Max's whole family missing and something locked in the basement. After they run away, strange things start happening all over town and teenagers mutate in extremely weird ways. What is going on??
Firstly, I really didn't like the writing style. It is obvious it's the author, Mark Illis' first book- the writing was very clunky and didn't flow well. It lacked finesse and didn't hold my interest, so I wasn't invested in the story at all.
The plot was also messy. Despite being a very short book, it crawled along at a snail's pave with very little action to make it interesting. The direction of the story also just wasn't to my taste. And I thought the climax was VERY anticlimactic and was resolved far too easily.
I didn't really like the characters. They were a bit unbelievable and their relationships with the other characters weren't very realistic. Although they were supposed to be teens banding together to solve this big problem, their friendship didn't really develop at all.
AND THE ROMANCE. Ugh. It would've been FAR better if it'd been left out.
Not quite bad enough for one star, but still NOT good. I'm really disappointed in the end. :( Sadly, it didn't work for me, so I won't be looking out for the sequel.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews