“Starter Villain”

John Scalzi

I sometimes struggle with the ‘fish out of water’ trope, and that was the biggest issue I had with this book — it turned what could’ve been a “spend a day reading an entire book” into a few days of shorter reading sessions. But I did get past it, and overall, the book was great. Scalzi’s writing style is wonderful, and I’m going to have to look at some of his other works just for that; very approachable, and the sense of timing is great.

The general concept here is “Charlie’s uncle died, and boy, dealing with the estate is a hell of a way to find out your uncle was a Bond villain.” There is, in fact, a scene where somebody admits that the Bond villains were actually inspired by their organization. A very nice touch, really—there’s no way to pretend this wasn’t inspired by the film aesthetics, so double down on it!

Overall, this was a fun read; the additional short story at the end was also a delightful touch, gave me just enough “here’s what’s going on afterwards” to feel like I have closure with the characters, while still leaving me feeling like they’ve got good lives going on. Well worth the read; check it out.1

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