Charlie Fitzer isn’t having a great time of it. His wife divorced him, he lost his job, and he’s back in his childhood home, after the death of his father (which he doesn’t, technically, own). And then his uncle Jake dies and his life gets worse. Jake was a billionaire, and, it turns out, a supervillain. And he’s left his villainous empire to Charlie. Despite Charlie never having met him since he was five years old.
Like its predecessor, Kaiju Preservation Society, Starter Villain is set in a present-day Earth that’s just a little… twisted. Charlie is thrown into the society of supervillains without any help, other than his uncle’s super-competent right hand woman, Mathilda Morrison. His new empire comes complete with volcano lair, giant laser and foul-mouthed dolphins. Oh, and sentient cats. This book is a huge amount of fun, but also manages to satirise late-stage capitalism, discuss labour relations, and the fecklessness of holders of inherited wealth in under 300 pages. It’s pretty light and easy to read but makes no bones about where it’s coming from and who Scalzi would have up against the wall when the revolution comes (spoiler: it’s billionaires). And in that, he’ll have my axe. Until that happens, I guess I’ll just keep buying his books.
