About the Book

Inheriting your mysterious uncle’s supervillain business is more complicated than you might imagine.

Sure, there are things you’d expect. The undersea volcano lairs. The minions. The plots to take over the world. The international networks of rivals who want you dead.

Much harder to get used to… are the sentient, language-using, computer savvy cats. And the fact that in the overall organization, they’re management.

About the Author

John Scalzi is one of the most popular and acclaimed SF authors. His debut, Old Man’s War, won him science fiction’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, The End of All Things and Redshirts, which won 2013’s Hugo Award for Best Novel. Material from his widely read blog Whatever has also earned him two other Hugo Awards. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter, and many cats. @scalzi

What I Thought

I have read and really enjoyed a couple of John Scalzi’s books before. Redshirts and The Kaiju Preservation Society. Starter Villain falls into the same category of creating a loving pastiche of the relevant genre, with a richly imagined world and entertaining plot to hang the humour on.

In Starter Villain we follow Charlie, a divorced substitute teacher who finds out about the demise of his estranged uncle, and along with his cat Hera gets thrown into a villainous world of volcanic lairs, assassination attempts and more. But it’s okay because Hera knows all about it and can …talk!

Dr Evil, Goldfinger and Thanos all get a nod but I got Gru from Despicable Me vibes too. Can mild mannered Charlie draw on his villainous side and keep his uncle’s businesses afloat when really all he wanted to do was run a pub?

Not only do we get sentient cats but we get unionised dolphins too. And supposedly dogs make the worst villains because they will betray you for a head rub and a treat. Not sure Daire is expressing Villain in the picture above tbh!

Although I was gifted a copy, in the end I did end up downloading the audiobook too because it is narrated by Wil Wheaton who does a great job at capturing Charlie’s incredulousness at what is happening to him.

There is a lot of action, explosions and peril. There’s even a villainous conference alongside an entrepreneurial one. Is there overlap between members?

Charlie faces off against henchmen, CIA agents and whales and at the end does he decide to stay and take over the family business? Does he even survive? There’s no saving of cats in this rather the cats do the saving.

In the afterword, John Scalzi mentions his experience of cognitive challenges post Covid and how he found writing this book took more effort than previous books would have taken. As someone living with Long Covid myself it is so important for people to be aware of some of the challenges that can face people who don’t bounce back from COVID-19 infection and I thank John for speaking out and hope he is feeling much better now. As ever he’s written a brilliant book and if you are a fan of Bond Villains or Austin Powers do be sure to pick this up.

Thanks to Black Crow PR and U.K. Tor for the gifted copy for the purposes of an honest review. Check out the rest of the tour using #StarterVillain

To everyone who could make someone else’s day worse, but tries to make it better instead.

John Scalzi – dedication of Starter Villain