I think I'm going to have to give up on these novelizations of comic stories, because for the most part, they're too limited by their medium. Marv Wolfman's Crisis on Infinite Earths novelization was great because he played to the strengths of his medium by transforming the multiverse-shattering epic into a personal story. But Cox's novelizations of Infinite Crisis, 52, Countdown, and now Final Crisis have not really done this; instead they mostly transcribe the dialogue and the action. But Cox captures none of the feeling of the stories he's novelizing: I may not have known what to make of Final Crisis, but there's not denying that it's epic and overwhelming and in turns despairing and triumphant. In Cox's telling, all of this is flat, just events without emotional resonance. There's no added depth here; his insights into the characters tend to repeat what they already communicate in dialogue. While Wolfman communicated something new with his novelization of his own story in the original Crisis, and Denny O'Neil's novelization of Knightfall was an adequate substitute for a set of comics I'll probably never get to, reading an outside author's take on comics I've already read hasn't really done much for me thus far.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
I really love great artwork and the front cover of the book just had me thinking, "Now that's what I'm on about!" The layout of the cover was great also apart from Wonder Woman being obscured. After a quick flick over to the back cover I got thinking that perhaps Wonder Woman was blacked out purposely. You see, Wonder Woman is a goddess and is renowned for being strikingly beautiful yet in the picture on the back cover where you can clearly see her face she looks very odd with her pursed lips and "out of it" look. In fact with the big boobs, pursed lips, dark hair and spaced out look it made me wonder why the artist didn't just give her an orange tan and call her Snooki.

MAIN COURSE:
I'm a big fan of the DC Universe novels but, bloody hell, was this particular novel confusing. The problem is that it takes place across multiple cities, multiple universes, multiple realities in different times and has more characters than you can shake a stick at...and I'm damn good at shaking my stick! As such I found my enjoyment of the story diminished as I had to constantly take myself out of the book to review what had occurred in relation to what was occurring elsewhere in other cities, other universes, other realities and other times. Sigh.
The story itself is well told by Cox and he worked well with the material he was given (this novel is based upon a series of comic books) and so I cannot blame him for the confusing storyline that involves multiverses slipping into the black hole of hell while the Green Lanterns have an internal crisis and the superheroes and humans of the world become mindless zombies and Superman disappears into the future and a certain superhero killed off a few years ago comes back to life while a major DC character dies (not giving anything away but just look at the front cover if you're wondering) while another gets amnesia and the space fabric of time collapses in on itself and the new gods are assassinated and Darkseid looks for human hosts while death himself in the form of the Black Racer chases The Flash...ARGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There's way too much going on and I'm not even an outsider who has no knowledge of the comic series.

THE VERDICT:
I have to admit I was left a tad disappointed by this novel after waiting so long to read it. It's way too complicated and a casual reader just picking this up for a read would be even more lost than I was at times. I would recommend this only to the hardcore DC followers. ( )