- Title:
- Starter Villain
- By:
- John Scalzi
- Pages:
- 264
- Rating:
- 5
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, hyperintelligent 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.
Oh yes, this was great. I am always wary of intelligent cats, but it worked here. I am usually worried about intelligent dolphins, ever since Douglas Adams scared them all away. And lasers and lava and hitmen, oh my!
It was brilliant. Short and snappy, with a similar feel to the Preservation Society in standalone tone and texture but with enough standout points to make it work in its own right, I enjoyed every page and will absolutely read again one day.