Iron Man (novelization)

By Peter David
As soon as I saw this was by Peter David, I had to get it. And when a “mistake” made by myself at Amazon.com sent a copy winging to me as well as to the friend I was originally ordering it for, well, who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? Right? Bending my rule on buying new books is ok when it’s in the pursuit of fangirling, right? Right?
Eh, screw it. I can break my own self-imposed rules.
The novelization is a blast. I knew from the first few pages, where David describes Tony’s POV in present-tense during the mortar attack, that I was going to love it, and I was right. David nails Tony’s self-destructive and self-deluding nature perfectly (there’s a great moment when Tony is considering a friend from college who was a druggie and wonders to himself why anybody would pollute their body with chemicals like that — and then he takes a sip of his scotch. Heh.). The story of Tony’s transformation into Iron Man is handled really well, and there are all kinds of little extra bits of information that are a hoot and a half. This was written from an earlier version of the script and is thus missing a lot of the banter and interplay that were added during shooting, but it’s still a lot of fun. Probably only a must-read for fans of Peter David or of the movie, though.
Book 11 in 2008.