Scalzi, John. Starter Villain. New York: Tor, 2023.
ISBN-13: 978-0765389220 | $28.99 USD | 264 pages | Science Fiction
Blurb
Now a New York Times bestseller!
Inheriting your uncle’s supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who’s running the place.
Charlie’s life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.
Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.
But becoming a supervillain isn’t all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they’re coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.
It’s up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.
In a dog-eat-dog world…be a cat.
Review
4 stars
I’ve never read John Scalzi before, but I’ve followed him on social media for a while and he’s always been a welcome presence on my timeline. And while some of his other works seem a little too high-concept for me, something about Starter Villain called to me…maybe it was the well-dressed cat on the cover or the bonkers premise. I had pretty much no idea what I was getting into beyond that, but I ended up loving it. It simultaneously doesn’t take itself too seriously, but also is a massive middle finger to the current state of the world, rife with corporate greed and income inequality. I loved the inclusion of these hyper-intelligent animals, from the spy cats who communicate via keyboard and a dolphin labor union consisting of members named after anti-capitalist slogans. The self-aware humor was absolutely a highlight here.
Charlie is a solid protagonist, being a bit of a fish-out-of-water. While in some ways he’s the least interesting aspect of the book, I like that he’s somewhat of an Everyman thrust into this new world due to the inheritance from his billionaire uncle and navigating the wild world of conspiracies and villainy. In some ways, the reader is in the same position as he is, learning about it all as they go along.
Scalzi packs a lot into a rather short book. It’s definitely not a super “action” heavy book, given it involves spies, so the interplay between characters is more subtle, and not too showy. I felt it worked well, but if you’re looking for something a bit more propulsive, you may be disappointed.
I had a lot of fun with this book, and am more optimistic about trying more of John Scalzi’s work in a similar vein going forward. If you’re looking for a rather bonkers, silly sci-fi story with anti-capitalist themes, and especially if you happen to love cats, I’d recommend checking this out.
Author Bio
JOHN SCALZI is one of the most popular SF authors of his generation. His debut, Old Man’s War, won him the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, Redshirts (which won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel), The Last Emperox, and 2022’s The Kaiju Preservation Society. Material from his blog, Whatever (whatever.scalzi.com), has earned him two other Hugo Awards. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.
Buy links
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