Memoirs Of An Invisible Man By H.F. Saint

I get my books from odd places. Garage sales, give a ways, bargain bins, and sometimes out of trash can at my friends house. (He has no tastes in books and often throw good ones away) I grab books that seem interesting, providing an new concept or have tons of potential. I prefer not to join the waves of current fans of big writers stalking their every move. I mean, these guys that no one hears of are sometimes better than JK Rowling, or Stephen King. Sometimes. This time around, the book is called Memoirs Of An Invisible Man By H.F. Saint

So the book has a typical write up on the back cover telling us that it is a man who becomes invisible and then goes on the run from the government. The book clearly tries to sell itself as action book using key words such as Zap! Bang! Kaboom! No. I am not kidding. And the book is covered with reviews on both covers and has three inside pages about how exciting it is. Sound like a fun book right? Well it should have been.

The book actually focuses on a man named Nick Halloway who is an accountant. And as he helps his girlfriend reporter get into a presentation at Micro Magnetics to show their new fusion program to develop energy, something goes wrong. Nick passes out during the evacuation. When he wakes up he finds that he is in the building which is entirely invisible along with him. The government is investigating. And Nick runs away. Or I should say walk away. He leaves, and goes to New York, plays the stock market, does a lot of accounting, live in casinos and apartments every other night and watch people in the park. Yes. That’s about as exciting as it gets. The people who left the reviews about it saying “Keeps you on the edge of your seat,” must also get a total thrill ride out of reading the phone book. But let’s started with the good and bad, shall we?

I’ll start with the bad. Because that’s so much easier to talk about. And with all the bad things in this story, it all basically boils down to one thing. Nick is a shallow person. Before he was physically turned invisible, he already was in another sense. There is no mention of family, friends, hobbies or anything. And the so called relationship he had with the reporter was all sex based. There was no love. They were just both kind of addicts I guess. There was no form of chemistry at all. Point is. There is nothing. So when Nick turns invisible, there is no sense that he lost anything. It’s like “Ahh shucks. Now I have to do my accounting over the phone.” I mean Nick in all sense of the word was nobody because he had no one and just went through the motions trying to earn more money. I mean, if he jumped into the river like George Bailey did, his angel wouldn’t even notice. That and like I said, there’s nothing. We’re just reading about this shallow character with no emotion at all doing things such as watch the stock market as the bad guys will show up every 150 pages or so and then every time the action scene comes, it is over by the next paragraph. Before this author wrote this, I feel he was a math teacher or accountant. I mean, he can not go into any drama or emotional detail centering on the main character, but will spend pages on the angles, dimensions, circumferences, volumes or a say a pile of stuff Nick climbs on top of to get over a fence. I mean its ridiculous. The author went on for ever about the numbers that were involved. I’m not sure why. But it was very odd.

The good? How he became invisible and the scene with the invisible building was very original But that’s all I can give this writer credit for. Oh wait, this book actually did lead to a good movie adaptation (That has nothing to do with the book besides the name) It’s a Chevy Chase ( a serious role) and is actually fun. But for that, I credit to John Carpenter who made the movie, not this book.

Overall, the book promises so much and delivers so little. I mean even if it didn’t had action, I expected emotion. Hell if it lied and was about a space aliens instead, I wouldn’t have cared. I just want something out of it. And it didn’t have it. So I recommend this to no one. But if you like this sort of science fiction stuff, I recommend the movie instead by John Carpenter. Stream it off of netflix and have fun. It’s everything this book wasn’t.

Overall rating: A Book That Really Should Vanish

½ Smoothie out of four

P.S. If you like books, check out my book and ebook website Lelue’s Realm. Google it or go directly to http://www.freewebs.com/lelue/