CBR15 Bingo: Adulthood – Charlie struggles with many of the downsides to adulthood, loans, parental loss, divorce, and barely scrapping by. Bingo #3! History (replaced with Nostalgia) to Europe.
John Scalzi is almost an auto buy for our household. However, the most recently trilogy had us feeling a little cold. Then last year’s The Kaiju Preservation Society was a spectacular showcase of what makes Scalzi such a fun writer. Based on The Kaiju Preservation Society I was already looking forward to my preorder of Scalzi’s newest book, Starter Villain, when I read emmalita’s review , and then I got excited. This sounded like classic Scalzi and I was here for it.
Much like the main character of The Kaiju Preservation Society, Charlie is barely making it. Divorced and no longer in journalism he’s been substitute teaching. He lives in his deceased parents’ home dodging the calls of the family lawyer about selling the house and settling the estate. On an average morning Charlie learns of the death of his extremely rich Uncle Jake. Who knew that owning parking garages paid so well. A former assistant for Jake, Matilda ‘Til’ Morrow, shows up with a deal to help Charlie get on his feet. He just has to attend his uncle’s funeral. And it’s a pretty bizarre funeral at that. It is clear that Charlie’s life is about to take a turn.
Til offers Charlie a way out of his troubles and into the secret world of Jake’s private Caribbean island and his “villainous” activities. Sure a device funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to activate rain clouds seem innocuous enough but then you learn it also has the ability to pinpoint satellites overheard for nefarious purposes. You see, Jake was a self proclaimed villain, complete with sentient dolphins running security in the water around his island and sentient cats in management. Charlie has been sucked into a secret villain organization, that may have influenced Ian Fleming’s portrayal of Bond’s nemesis organization, Spectre.
What makes this classic Scalzi is the witty dialogue, sparse prose keeping the story moving quickly, an every man out of his depths, long world building set up to fast paced action, and overall a lot of fun! If you like John Scalzi, you will like this book. If you’ve never read Scalzi, I suggest this would be a good one to try first. I had the great fortune to meet him on the book tour for Starter Villain and I’m happy to report that he is delightfully funny and entertaining in person.