Starter Villain by John Scalzi
I would like to thank Tor for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Tor
Published – Out Now
Price – £18.99 hardback £9.99 Kindle eBook
Warning: supervillain in training. Risk of world domination.
Inheriting his late uncle’s business proves complicated. It’s also way more dangerous than Charlie could ever have imagined. Because his uncle had kept his supervillain status a secret – until now.
Divorced and emotionally dependent on his cat, Charlie wasn’t loving life. Although they weren’t close, news of his Uncle Jack’s death didn’t help. And that was before Jake’s rivals (seriously vengeful ones) ambushed his funeral. Now Charlie must decide if he should stay stuck in his rut, or step up to take on the business, the enemies, the minions, the hidden volcano lair . . .
Even harder to get used to are the sentient, language-using, computer-savvy cats – and the fact that in the organization’s hierarchy, they’re management. If Charlie does say yes, this lifeline could become a death wish. Because there’s much more to being an Evil Mastermind than he suspected. Yet could this also, finally, be his chance to shine?
Satire in a world like ours is hard. When politicians claim doing nothing is actually brave decision making and lies are uttered every minutes and go unchecked it can often feel redundant. Great satire holds though a mirror to the world to highlight the unfairness and hypocrisy of the world and gives us insight, solidarity and perhaps compassion. The worst kind of satire takes the bleeding obvious and tries to add cute jokes that fail as flat as the characters and that sadly was my experience of Starter Villain by John Scalzi.
Charlie Fisher was once a journalist, but that career path has vanished and now is a substitute teacher living in his father’s house. The 32-year-old is battling his older step-siblings to stay in it and he hungers to manage and own a pub. But a lack of cash takes his dreams away. Then his uncle a reclusive billionaire dies, and it turns out Charlie could manage the company –which is not a giant of US parking lot industry but actually running massive and dangerous schemes on behalf of anyone who pays enough. They are Villains, they have talking cats and dolphins, and Charlie is well over his head.
I know I’m not the hugest fan of comedy in fantasy or the lighter tone but this is a shallow inconsequential novel where Scalzi talks about capitalism being you know actually evil as if you may not be aware – long info dumps of finance discussion and business follow. That is a path many a fine SF tale has done this but the main character her here is a floating ball of nothingness who tends to stand and be told things to go ‘that’s terrible’… then some more. The talking cats run out of humour after their second appearance, and everything feels shallow. Very little happens bar scrapes and infodumps. Its massively unforgettable and drama free The annoying thing is Scalzi can write a decent plot and characters and this tale is just plain insipid. Charlie sounds less a 32-year-old and more a much older middle-aged guy who looks at the world and tuts but thinks some rubbish jokes will help get the message out. Its satire on easy level and even then, I feel misses it targets and will make all the impact of being hit by a soap bubble. The idea of talking dolphins unionising against Villains is just poorly handled. Scalzi seems to say it’s just bad people in charge and good people can take over and make a difference - it’s simplistic analysis at best of why big business can often be morally bankrupt and unethical.
Overall I felt that this was an incredibly disappointing lightweight unfunny novel that I have no desire to read again and cannot recommend.
