The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Reviewed by Kristin

Jamie Gray* thought that a performance review would be an excellent chance to showcase their ideas and innovations, but füdmüd CEO Rob Sanders had other ideas. Jamie walks into the meeting as a marketing executive and walks out with the offer of being a company “deliverator” – a food delivery person in the midst of 2020. Jamie fumes and swears never to stoop that low, but the reality of New York City rents and roommates jumping ship in the middle of a pandemic causes them to start delivering seven-spice chicken and vegan egg rolls at all hours.

A chance encounter with an old acquaintance named Tom finally gives Jamie a way out. Tom Stevens works with KPS, a company that he calls an animal rights organization. One of Tom’s team is on a ventilator in Houston; he needs a replacement team member, and he needs one now. No special skills are needed, just the ability to lift stuff. Well, maybe lift stuff, follow directions unquestioningly, and keep your mouth shut about what you are lifting. Jamie jumps at the chance to ditch the deliverator cap, passes the background check, and has two days to get their affairs arranged before the KPS team heads out on a new assignment.

As it turns out, the top-secret part of the assignment is even more important than being able to lift stuff, because Jamie is about to travel to a parallel universe where real-life giant creatures (think Godzilla) are entire ecosystems unto themselves, and oh yeah, they just happen to produce nuclear power. The Kaiju Preservation Society really does want to protect these creatures, and definitely wants to keep them from thinning the layers between dimensions so that they don’t pop back into the “real” world. Umm, that might have happened once or twice before. Not the kaijus’ fault, of course. That was totally on humanity who kept messing around with atomic bombs.

John Scalzi is a scathingly brilliant wordsmith who tells extremely entertaining stories while also pointing out the inequalities and disparities contained in the world today. In this fictional take on alternate worlds and political manipulation of the sciences, Scalzi writes characters who believe themselves too powerful to be bothered with morals, as well as underdog characters who fight for the greater good, and for the toppling of billionaire/corporate empires.

 

*All while reading this book, I thought that Jamie was a woman, telling her story in the first person. Other reviewers have assumed that Jamie was a man. Flipping back through the book, I couldn’t find any clues. Then I found a Kirkus review that says Jamie’s gender was never specified.