Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

You can almost imagine the genesis of this novel. A young Austin Grossman running around on the playground at middle school, being taunted over and over - "Here comes Gross-Man, the World's Most Disgusting Super Hero..." From there it wouldn't be hard for him to identify with Dr. Impossible, the super-genius villain (a la Lex Luthor or Dr. Doom - only without the troubling trademark issues) and protagonist.

This novel tells the story of the aforementioned villain and a female cyborg rookie hero, alternating between their stories as the bad doctor tries to take over the world, and the cyborg (named Fatale) just tries to find out who she is in the wake of the life-changing accident that created her (think The Bionic Woman.)

This novel's received a lot of praise, and it is somewhat funny as it looks behind the curtain at these flawed, all-too-human super beings and their allies and nemeses. This isn't a new idea; I've seen it before - and long before Watchmen. Nor is it a particularly original story - most of the praise heaped upon it is that it turns the comic-book cliches on their head, which just means it uses old saws throughout.

Even so, this is a fun story, and if you're a fan of comic book super heroes, you'll enjoy it immensely.

Recommendation: Buy it.

Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon by Garrison Keillor

I'm a big Prairie Home Companion fan, and I enjoy the Lake Wobegon stories as much as anyone, but what works for a 10-minute segment on a long radio show doesn't translate well into a novel.

I only made it through the first five chapters before I gave up on this book. The story rambled on and on about what felt like pointless details about an elderly Lutheran woman who kicks off at the beginning of the first chapter. Apparently the woman had an unknown late-life affair with a Latino dance instructor, and her last requests left her surviving family members scratching their heads. However, according to the back cover, this story is about a wedding. I guess Garrison was going to get to that eventually, after he finished explaining how the old lady liked to cook for church events.

I'm sorry, Garrison, this book isn't for me. I like tension and plot in my stories.

Recommendation: Skip it.

Prey by Michael Crichton

This was one of the last Crichton novels I hadn't read. I tried to read it a few years back, but quit early on because I found it a bit troubling. I'm glad I tried again.

The book is a tense sci-fi thriller about nano-technology running out of control. It's arguably one of Crichton's best works, in the tradition of Jurassic Park and Terminal Man.

One of the reasons Science Fiction is so important as a genre is that it often deals with ethical and moral dilemmas we will be forced to face as a species years before we must face them. This gives us the necessary breathing room to make informed and reasoned decisions before the genie is out of the bottle.

Crichton's death left a hole in the genre that nobody else seems to be filling at the moment. He was able to take the most esoteric of concepts and put them into bestselling novels that taught without being preachy.

Recommendation: Buy it.

The Firefly by P. T. Deutermann

This is actually a pretty good story, although the premise is on the absurd side. I took a liking to the protagonist, Swamp Morgan, from the beginning, and the villain is compelling, too.

While I won't talk about some of the more unbelievable plot points in this novel because it would ruin the story, I will mention the one I found most dubious: the claim that the Democrats were actually the "war" party, not the Republicans. Deutermann never explained this boast, but I would have loved to hear how he rationalized it.

Recommendation: Borrow it.

The Shelters of Stone by Jean M. Auel

I almost didn't want to finish this novel. It feels like I've been following Ayla for a long time, now, and now who knows if Auel will ever finish another Earth's Children novel?

As with the other novels in this series, Auel is more interested in talking about the world as it was 30,000 years ago than she is in telling an adventure story. Whenever the tension starts to mount, you can be sure she'll switch to a long dissertation on flint knapping, basket weaving, or the physical characteristics of wild horses in stone-age Europe. Not that the tension ever gets that high in these stories, where the conflicts seldom are a matter of life or death.

Even so, Ayla, the protagonist Auel first introduced in The Clan of the Cave Bear is one of the most compelling literary characters I've ever read. She's a female messiah, who changes life in the ancient world just by virtue of her loving heart, open (and clever) mind, and selfless nature. In this installment, Ayla finally mates Jondalar and joins his people. Now, she needs to make her home in this new society without compromising her ideals (we've already seen this same story line played out many times in the last two books, so there's not a lot new here.)

This series is very much a new-age, feminist treatise. Auel suffers from "noble savage" syndrome, and her feminine characters are almost all nurturing, spiritual and wise, while her male characters tend to be either emasculated artisans, bigoted bumpkins, or brutish thugs.

Now that I've finished all of the Earth's Children books, I have a sense of lose. I miss the characters and the world that Auel created.

Recommendation: Buy it.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman has the ability to tell the most fantastic stories in a way that seems perfectly real. He accomplishes this in part by creating a cast of compelling characters who are so believable readers instantly relate to everything they do no matter how fantastic.

This novel starts with the release of a mysterious prisoner named Shadow, who has spent the last three years in a prison serving a sentence which seems, to a large extent, to have been unjust. When he's released, Shadow just wants to go home to his wife and resume his work at his best friend's gym. Unfortunately, fate has other ideas and Shadow is soon embroiled in what seems to be a growing conflict between ancient gods.

I was a fan before I read this novel, but now Neil Gaiman is definitely one of my favorite writers.

Recommendation: Buy it.