Read All The Books Aaaaaah! discussion

I'm hoping this will at least have a couple of references to the checklist of what you will or won't do when you become an evil overlord.

https://legendspbem.angelfire.com/evi...

So far this hasn't been a story, it's been a memoir. I want a linear narrative, and instead what I'm getting is a first-person reminiscence bouncing around all over the place like, "oh, and then there was the time when I..." And it's not funny like Dr Horrible.

Also, he says right up front "I am invincible," so I don't see why the title is "Soon I will be invincible."

Now I've just started Chapter 2, and this one's from the PoV of a superheroine named Fatale.

Waiting to see if it gets any better.

uh oh he telling the story the same way my mother would

Mine too.

still better than me telling a story out loud:

So this happened. *Gets all jumbled up about the middle events and spouts a few random string of words that I know no one but myself can connect.* And then yeah it ended like this.

The chapters go back and forth between Dr Impossible and Fatale. I enjoyed Fatale's chapter. It's still not funny. I was expecting a comedy, but it's just a pretty straight superhero/villain story, and that seems to be okay for Fatale's chapters.

Also, I can't help this song playing in my head thanks to the title.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdOic...

Our destination turns out to be a white cinder-block room with a two-way mirror along one wall.

I can see myself in the two-way mirror. My nose is bleeding a little, but I don’t look as bad as I thought.

Perhaps you mean a 1-way mirror? A 2-way mirror would be a mirror on both sides, and that would be useless for surveillance.

From chapter 2 on, it's been a proper linear narrative, so it's better overall, even the Dr Impossible parts. His escape from prison was pretty cool.

ooh prison break

I didn't realise until now that the book is written in present tense. I guess it eased me into it with the memoir-like beginning, and I didn't notice when it transitioned into a narrative. Normally I find present tense distracting and often gimmicky, but I don't hate it like I hate second person perspective. If this had been in 2nd person present tense, it would have gone straight back to the library, but thankfully this is in 1st person, and the present tense isn't bothering me here.

The two main characters are completely separate so far still -- Dr Impossible's been in prison until recently, and now he's busy gathering resources while in hiding, and Fatale is adjusting to her new status as the latest rookie member of a league of superheroes. She's a combat cyborg who was selected to replace a previous gynoid teammember who was killed on a mission. The team has been called in to find Dr Impossible after his escape, so the two main characters will probably be meeting soon.

The superheroes in the league are largely based on existing superheroes. Maybe all of them are, but I'm no superhero expert. There's a definite Batman, and another that seems to be a cross between Wolverine and Beast. I don't recognise the others.

Oh yeah, there's also a Dr Strange character, but he doesn't seem to hang out with the rest of them.

I don't like this part. The chapter started with Dr Impossible biding his time in his current hideout, then flashed back to how he got there from the prison, then flashed further back to his moment of glory just before he was caught and sent to prison, and then flashed FURTHER back AGAIN to when he had just gotten his superpowers and he was experimenting to see what he could do. I don't need to see all that stuff happen! Let's just move forward with the story, please.

The Joy of Erudition wrote: "Oh yeah, there's also a Dr Strange character, but he doesn't seem to hang out with the rest of them."

my introvert buddy

I took a peek at some reviews, just to see if other people were disappointed that this isn't a comedy, and I saw quite a range of reactions. Some were saying it's absolutely a parody, because it has a lot of common superhero tropes and the heroes are based on famous ones, but I don't think that qualifies it as a parody, by itself. Others complained that if it IS a parody, it's not doing a good job of it because it's not funny and it doesn't do any deconstruction of the tropes.

As far as I'm concerned, it's just a straight superhero/villain story, not trying to deconstruct anything, just telling a story, and it seems sincere at it, aside from an occasional wry comment here and there, which you'd get in any drama. It's not a super-wow story, but there have been more cool, fun moments, and the main characters are pretty good, though the side characters aren't developed much.

When Fatale went into her room and found a custom-made team costume laid out for her, indicating that she was an official part of the league, I felt that! 🥲 And then she comes out wearing it and finds the rest of them gathered in the kitchen applauding when she comes in, and they have a cake with her name on it.

Dr Impossible pointed out to a transparent superhero that she should be blind as a result of her invisibility, for one of reasons I brought up when I was reading The Invisible Man! I've never seen anyone else bring this up before! Unfortunately, she just brushes it off and doesn't even answer him.

The narrative still bounces back and forth in time, not just between two parallel timelines like some other books, but just randomly from one major past event to another in addition to the present. Often I can't tell whether I'm in a flashback or if these are the current events. Very confusing.

This current chapter feels markedly different from the rest of the book. The tone here, just in this chapter, where Dr Impossible tells a more detailed story of his university days and the accident that created his arch-nemesis CoreFire, is indeed more humourous than the rest, and more along the lines of what I was expecting from the book overall.

My suspicion here is that this book was originally a short story, and this chapter was that short story, and he ended up writing the rest of the book around this bit, but the longer-form story ended up with a more serious tone.

I never mentioned what the overall plot actually is, but I wasn't really sure about it most of the time anyway. It was sort of a mystery around "What happened to CoreFire?" because he was missing before this story began, and we only got little clues to piece together who this CoreFire even was. It was mentioned early on that Dr Impossible "made" CoreFire, so I was under the impression that he was a robot of some kind for a while, since there are robot characters in this book. But no, CoreFire was just a popular jock type character that was a sort of rival at school for Dr Impossible, and he walked into an errant beam that Dr Impossible was demonstrating (before he was a supervillain), and that's how CoreFire got his powers. Dr Impossible got his own powers later, in another lab accident.

Anyway, this CoreFire was pretty central to the plot despite being completely absent from most of the book except for in flashbacks.

One of the superheroes in this book had an origin that was basically going to Narnia with her siblings and living there for 14 years and coming back and finding only a few weeks had passed. They all had magic items with them, but the others threw theirs into the woods to hide them from the rescue workers, and never found them again, but Regina held onto her magic staff.

“Bullshit! I know who CoreFire was looking for, and it wasn’t Doctor Impossible, I’ll tell you that much.”

I go back to the computer, hoping for some detail here that I missed before. If CoreFire wasn’t looking for Doctor Impossible, then who?

This is four paragraphs after it has been firmly established (as it had already been established several times before) that Dr Impossible was in prison at the time CoreFire disappeared, and moreover CoreFire knew that Dr Impossible was in prison, because he was part of the team that put him in there. So why the hell would he have been looking for Dr Impossible when he disappeared? Leftover dialogue from a previous draft?

Dr Impossible's evil plan to conquer the world is to cool down global temperatures.

This is going to be different. This is one thing they didn’t foresee. I don’t have to destroy the Earth, just cool it down a little. Soon we’ll see temperature drops of ten or twenty degrees Celsius. Ice creeps down from the poles, and the Earth’s whiteness starts reflecting more heat back into space, cooling things down further. Global warming becomes a fond memory.

You have my support, Dr Impossible.

The non-linear storytelling is still out of control in this thing. Like we go from Dr Impossible watching the Champions arriving at the island complex, to the next chapter where they're all in holding cells listening to a recorded victory speech from Dr Impossible, and then it flashes back to the battle that put them there, then back to the present again for them to discuss their escape, except instead of discussing escape they argue about it and then start telling Fatale their origin stories, so it's like another flashback.

And then their backup arrives, and there's a classic grand speech when Dr Impossible has him in his power, with the chapter title making a reference to the "Before I kill you, Mr Bond" trope, and again this part's tone is different, and feels like it doesn't belong in this book, like this was part of that hypothetical short story I mentioned before, now inserted into a longer narrative that had drifted away from its original intent. This part is tropey, jokey, setting things up to subvert them, and in a couple of places seems to contradict minor things that were established earlier.

A very strange ending. Fatale's PoV was half of the book, and everything pointed to some momentous clash between her and Dr Impossible, who was the PoV for the other half of the book. Instead, a character absent for most of the book showed up and took centre stage, and a side character revealed that she was actually someone from Dr Impossible's past, and took over the rest of it. Fatale didn't have a big character arc, nor was she instrumental in the plot. She played no more than a supporting role throughout the book. In fact the whole team of Champions, including Fatale, sat out the final confrontation with Dr Impossible.

Yeah, Fatale punched Dr Impossible at the end, when he was already tied up and helpless, but why did she even do it? She shouldn't have had any grudge against him, especially knowing that he was responsible for saving her life after an accident and giving her her powers and asking nothing in return.

She also released Elphin from her ancient geas by throwing a magic hammer into the ocean at midnight, but it was not explained why Elphin asked her to do it, or what it accomplished, exactly. She just threw the hammer and there was a clap of thunder, and nothing further was said about it. And it seemed like a spur of the moment decision on Elphin's part to ask Fatale to do it rather than any of the others or doing it herself, so it's not like Fatale was instrumental in this thing either.

Dr Impossible didn't have a satisfying arc either, mainly thanks to the fact that his world conquest plan was doomed to fail. Normally in such stories, the satisfaction comes from the victory of the hero(s), but since the victorious ones in this story just popped up near the end, it was hollow. I feel like the author made a poor choice of who was supposed to be the main characters. This book could have used another draft, I think, both for the characters and to reconsider the chaotic non-linearity. And maybe to develop some of the other characters a little more, because some were virtually unused, and some I had a hard time remembering exactly what they were supposed to be able to do because the exposition was so weak and we hardly ever saw them in action.

In short, a fun story, but needlessly confusing and unsatisfying at the end.