I read Starter Villain after my hold came up in the library. That’s always fun, it’s like winning a small lottery, especially if the book has many holds. I liked this; I try not to read other people’s reviews of the same books I read before writing the review, but I did read one for this where the reviewer didn’t like the end and felt like it made the entire thing feel unreal. Which I can understand, but I did not feel that way. There are talking dolphins and cats. Not much in this is real. Swearing, not talking dolphins. And we always think our animals are more clever than they are, so I really liked the cat buying real estate.
Starter Villain is another fun romp that came out not too longer after the Kaiju Preservation Society, which John Scalzi said he wrote very quickly after he ripped up his much more serious book. Hey, if you’ve got a niche, stick with it I guess. He has the same middle aged kind of loser shlub main character (I don’t even remember his name), and a female character who is smarter than him and not into him at all. (Refreshing!) And his uncle dies and makes him the heir to his evil empire. Only this guy, it turns out, is TERRIBLE at being evil. Good thing he has help with that from some folks he knows about and some he doesn’t.
In sum, this was a pleasant diversion from some of the more serious sci-fi and fantasy novels I’ve been reading lately. It’s goofy, it’s comforting. Shoutout to the bonkers cover for giving me a great reaction from my kid when I showed him. “That’s one of the cats that talks.” Good times.
