The phrase "almost as surprising" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to describe a situation that is almost as surprising as another situation, but not quite as surprising. For example: "Her finding the solution was almost as surprising as winning the lottery."
Almost as surprising, the cardiac patients have embraced the routine.
Chung Doo Myong's career was almost as surprising.
Almost as surprising is the departure of Sweden, the gold-medal winner in 2006.
Almost as surprising as NASA's announcement is the lack of attention it has received.
But the truth, announced at a press conference in London's Soho Hotel yesterday, is almost as surprising.
Nieve has a shorter résumé (52 games, 11 starts), making his performance almost as surprising and just as impressive.
His campaign events end almost as an afterthought, surprising voters used to the big finishes typically served up by the presidential candidates seeking their support.
The next day he did something almost as important and surprising: he drew the right lessons from his win.The prime minister had run a solid, unspectacular campaign focused on stability and competence.
These recent books are surprising — it's almost as if tech writing were evolving, like technology itself, to suit my personal needs and desires.
In the final weeks of a campaign marked by widespread voter disillusionment and growing economic distress, and after Pope Benedict XVI's decision to step down on Feb. 28 upended once-solid assumptions, Mr. Grillo's Five Star Movement has surged ahead, surprising the experts almost as much as Pope Benedict did.
Not long ago, in an apartment that he and his wife, Dianne Hagaman, had taken for the fall in the Fifth Arrondissement — the neighborhood of Paris that clusters around the old Sorbonne — he sat and talked about his life's work and its apotheosis in Paris, almost as a spectator of his own surprising career.
