Starter Villain by John Scalzi

 

Reviewed by Kristin

One morning, Charlie turns on the news and discovers that his long lost and extremely rich uncle is dead. Not that he actually expects to receive anything from the man he hasn’t seen since he was five years old, when Charlie’s mother died.

Charlie is just an ordinary guy with a string of bad luck. His wife left him, he’s no longer a halfway respectable journalist (he’s now a substitute teacher), he’s living in his dead father’s house co-owned by his much older half siblings (who want to liquidate), and he lost his good pair of shoes. So that explains the black Skechers he is wearing with his black suit as he goes to the bank to ask for a loan to buy McDougal’s Pub, hoping to turn that endeavor into financial stability.

I’m sure you can guess how that turned out.

As Charlie returns home from the bank, he discovers a woman on his front porch swing, a woman who is about to change his life. She tells him that his uncle did leave him something, and now he should come with her to learn about his extensive business holdings around the world. They include an island volcano lair, of course, as Charlie’s uncle evidently was something of a villain.

Talking spy cats, unionized dolphins, whales with questionable motives, assassins, and other competing villains…(oops, I mean, “other totally upstanding business people”), that’s just the beginning of the story.

John Scalzi has a brutally sharp wit and the ability to make the totally absurd seem absolutely believable. As soon as I was drawn into the first few pages, I knew that I was in for an exciting read. I was a particular fan of the super intelligent talking cats. With a broad cast of characters, human and otherwise, Scalzi takes us on yet another wild ride with Starter Villain.