I was looking for something light after a few dense reads and this came recommended by a friend as a fun romp for the brain, or in the author’s own words, a “pop song” of a book. Scalzi had me at page 21, with this hilarious exchange. “They have vegan cheese.” “No, they don’t. They have shredded orange and white sadness that mocks cheese and everything it stands for.” And yes, I know that vegan cheese certainly exists, but as a person who unabashedly loves cheese, Scalzi tickled my funny bone most excellently. This was the first of many times this book made me chuckle: it is real candy for the brain.
Before I get into the content of the book, I want to talk about its origins because it’s super interesting. In Scalzi’s Author’s Note and Acknowledgments, he explains that he was writing a very ambitious book back in 2020 and then well, he just decided he couldn’t do it anymore. For the first time in his career, he emailed his editor and said that he was quitting. It was a difficult conversation, but he just didn’t have it in him, in the pandemic, to continue with this complex work. And then, the very next day, he woke up with this book, fully formed in his brain. It goes to show what can happen sometimes when you say no to one thing, and don’t keep going down the same path that’s plaguing you. And I’m so glad he did!
And now, the book itself!
So what’s the action of the book? I mean, it’s right there in the title. There is such a thing as the Kaiju Preservation Society because a) kaiju are real b) they need preserving, from each other, but also from humanity cuz humans are trouble. Set in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Jamie is a food delivery driver after recently been laid off by a tech start-up. Desperate for steady work, she takes a mysterious job offer to “lift heavy things” from an acquaintance and finds herself in a whole new world. There is a lot of scientific gobbledy-gook that sailed over my head, but what makes this book great is the snappy dialogue, and of course, the freakin’ kaiju. In addition, as a person who was recently laid off by a tech startup, there were some on-the-nose industry insights that I found very humorous.
This is the first of Scalzi I have read, but while I was in the middle of reading this book my hold on Redshirts became available and as a lifelong fan of Star Trek, I’m confident his satire of the Trek universe is only going to have me further enamored with his writing and kooky brain.