I'll start by saying that this is clearly a very influential story, and it is by no means bad. The main reasons I'm only giving this 3☆ is stiffness of the characters and the mediocre motivations.

This is an old book, so I expected the stiff characters that accompany that, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Many of the characters come off very prim and unlikable; although I'm not sure any of the characters are supposed to be likable, now that I think about it. Regardless, this led me to be severely uninterested in anything beyond the premise and theme of the story, which is arguably the main point, anyway.

Unfortunately, this only compounds with the poor character motivation. I use the singular there, because it seems the Invisible Man's only goal by the end is chaos. He's easily angered, and when he gets mad he jumps straight to violence. At the end of the book, he's just planning to become a serial killer. It's really not very well executed.

Where this book really shines is premise and themes, which have been discussed to death in literature classes around the world, so I won't get into them here. This is where all 3☆ came from.

IMO you should read this book if you're interested in old sci-fi, but don't go into it expecting anything transcendent. If you like classics you probably won't have an issue with this book, I'm just not a fan of the characters in classics.

I liked the premise but I didnt like how the whole world was against him.

This book has some surprisingly good scary moments for an early science fiction piece.

I enjoyed it. A little difficult to read because of the old language and Wells writing the accents of some people by spelling things poorly or dropping letters. I was also hoping it would focus more on his descent into madness but he was just kind of an asshole to begin with. Mix that with weird motives and and a general dislike for people and he was not far from madness to begin with. Ended up kind of just being him making people more and more angry until they tried to beat him up and it was for some reason harder than it probably should have been. Still kept me interested though, how would they catch an invisible man? (His own spite did him in tbh.)

I think the description should be: A sociopathic scientist gets obsessed with physics and renders himself invisible. This boost in power further exposes the flaws in a man's personality.

I found the beginning of the story a bit disjointed, as the author starts in the middle and then midway goes back and explains how the man became invisible. The story is not very long and while not enthralling still captures the attention. I think the powerful part of this book is the underlying social commentary:
* power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely
* beware of how much power you grant sociopaths and psychopaths

My first Wells. Probably not the best place to start.

This was a very silly book. At times it showed a surprisingly effective knack for horror - not that it was scary exactly - but most of the time, things were just cartoonish. Just look at the reviews around here to get a good sense of what I mean. Have you ever seen so many jokes about frozen nuts?

There were things I liked here, but mostly I can see why this is one of the "lesser" Wellses.