John Scalzi can usually be relied on to deliver some delightfully silly good fun, and Starter Villain is no exception. Much in the same vein as one of his other more recent books, The Kaiju Preservation Society, Starter Villain starts with some down in the dumps protagonist whose life is suddenly shaken upside down and they are suddenly swept away to a secret, parallel part of society that we regular schlubs never get to see. A hidden section of society that’s a little fun, a little exiting, and more than a little bit dangerous.
And for us, the reader? A little slice of escapism.
This time around, we’re following Charlie Fitzer, a one time journalist and sometime substitute teacher who’s on the edge of loosing his house. His only positive in life seems to be his cat, Hera. The event that throws his life upside down is the death of his very wealthy Uncle Jake, who, supposedly, made his billions in the business of car parks. What could be more mundane than car parks?
As events surrounding dear Uncle Jake’s funeral start to reveal, there was a little more to the car parks than meets the eye—and now that Jake is dead, someone has to deal with his somewhat less than ethical business empire. There’s a hidden brotherhood of super villain oligarchs conventing in Italy in very short order, and as his Uncle’s heir, Charlie has to pay a visit to the figurative crocodile pit.
On the plus side, he gets a second cat. And both his cats know a hell of a lot more than they’re letting on.
What we get next is a very lighthearted and cheeky send up of the Bond genre, with a 007 more accustomed to students then spying, while everyone else is a scheming Dr. No—complete with cat. We also get a good dose of hit-men, space lasers, backstabbing, an evil island lair, and dolphins Who, while they don’t have frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads, they do have an impressively foul mouthed vocabulary. And a burgeoning union movement.
Starter Villain is not a very complex novel; the characters are not the most deep and the implications of a large convocation of super villains are not explored at all, but rather cheerfully swept under the rug. The focus is instead on maintaining the fast pace and the humor – and it does both very well. At no point does this book take itself seriously. I did laugh out loud here more than Kaiju Preservation Society (The title quote, for example, killed me nearly as though roughly as a bullet from a golden gun), but the ending did seem a little more abrupt. Otherwise it was a fun concept, a lighthearted funny read and I think it could make for a very good movie adaption though, or a limited TV series.
For cbr16bingo, this is Détante. And this is directed towards the dolphins…
And that’s a bingo on the right hand side.
