Iron Man 2 (the novelization, not the movie)

I got an advance  copy of the Iron Man 2novelization by Alexander Irvine.  I really didn't expect too much from this book; it's the novelization of a superhero movie, and novelizations generally suck. This one doesn't quite suck, but it isn't exactly a great book either.

I'm going to guess that most of this isn't Irvine's fault. I mean he is pretty much stuck with the plot and dialogue from the movie, so he can't really take much in the way of creative liberties with that stuff. He is essentially stuck with whatever crap the studio churned out, and believe me, much of this is crap.

The plot itself is OK. It moves pretty fast, and didn't have many gapingly obvious holes. There's plenty of fight scenes and explosions, and all the sort of things that makes the movie seem guaranteed to be a blockbuster. It also tends to make the book fairly exciting.

The dialogue is another matter entirely. Even Irvine seemed to realize this, as he refers to the very lame attempts at humor as frat boy style jokes. Here's a prime example, "So you're telling me you're proud of the fact that Hammer filled your vacuum?" Ha ha, isn't that funny? Assuming you're either really drunk or high, it is. Otherwise, it's lame, as is most of the dialogue.

The characters all come across as lame and two dimensional, except Tony Stark. He comes across as lame, two-dimensional, and an unlikeable jerk. I kept hoping the bad guy would kick his ass, but was sadly disappointed.