Iron Man 2 novelization - Alexander Irvine from a script by Justin Theroux
I'm usually a big fan of novelizations since when I go to a blockbuster I usually like getting the story out of the way ahead of time and just stare at the awesome visuals (from a drunken or otherwise altered state). What Irvine has done though is pretty awful. It's quite apparent upon reading that his knowledge of Iron Man and the universe extends only to the first movie and the script of the second one. The characters have almost no background, they are rarely ever described physically. The suits themselves are never even described further than saying Mark 2, 3, 4 or 5, he just assumes the reader should know.
His descriptions of things are completely wrong, like calling something an "MMA elbow strike" as if MMA were a style not a sport. I do karate, that's a style, we have elbow strikes, Muay Thai is also a style that has elbow strikes, describing something as MMA elbow strike shows a lack of knowledge of MMA as a sport that is comprised of many disciplines and as such has many ways of of doing elbow strikes. Sorry, the martial artist in me always gets his dander up when people talk about martial arts while obviously know nothing.
My sister took the book and is reading it too, because like me she also studied Literature in college and will read just about anything. The main weakness of Irvine's work is that if you go in having no knowledge of Iron Man before reading, you'll leave the book in just about the same state. Descriptions, characterizations, setting hardly exist. I work in publishing and the number one rule is to treat your audience as if they are seeing the subject matter for the first time, describe, richly describe.
If you want to read an Iron Man type story written well I suggest Dale Brown's Act Of War and it's sequel, Edge Of Battle.
