CBR14BINGO: Monster Square
(Kaiju=monster for the most part but a handful of monstrous people involved as well. This would have never been something that I would have picked up but when Cannonballers recommend, you listen. Perhaps I should have used the Rec’d square for this one, but Monster is too perfect.)
A recently downsized tech worker, Jamie, starts delivering app-ordered food during the Covid pandemic. When the delivery is to someone that Jamie talked to once a party in college, a whole new world literally opens up. Tom offers Jamie a job with a salary that cannot be ignored despite the fact that little is explained about what the job entails. Shrounded in mystery until arriving on site, Jamie becomes one of the newest members of the Kaiju Preservation Society team. All Jamie has to do is help to keep the monsters happy and thriving on their side of the door to the multiverse.
I’m a fantasy gal but not much of a science fiction one. Not sure why, but I prefer watching sci-fi to reading it which is something I should try to remedy. Also, books with very contemporary dialogue that has me googling ye olde urban dictionary are usually not that enjoyable for me. If something feels hyper-real and too on the nose, I’m too conscious of it and can’t lose myself in the reading. Granted, this book is about another dimension where Godzilla-like creatures rule the roost, but it’s also about someone that lost their job at a company that created a food delivery app only to be demoted to a food delivery person for that same app during the height of the Covid pandemic. Is that what meta is? I think that is what meta is but all of my attempts to have someone really define it to this 50+-year-old have been ineffective. This feels like what meta should mean anyway. See? That’s how easily my mind wanders with this kind of stuff.
Anyway, Scalzi managed to keep me from derailing myself with shiny buzzwords. It was a fast read that had me laughing out loud. In terms of current political and environmental concerns, it was VERY on point but I didn’t find that it pulled me out of the story. With everything that is going on these days, somehow an alternate dimension that houses mythical Japanese monsters and the folks assigned to keep everything from getting all Jurassic Park/World isn’t that hard to imagine.
