Hardcover, 272 pages
Published March 8, 2022 by Tor Books.
When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls "an animal rights organization." Tom's team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.
What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble.
It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society that's found its way to the alternate world. Others have, too--and their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.
This book starts with the same formula as his next, Starter Villain: snappy, funny dialog with a silly plot idea. And I mean 'silly' as a good thing. It totally works in Villain.
This book though relies on a very tired plot point to move forward and then falters. Just didn't work for me.
Nothing too deep, but genuinely fun. And unless it was a fluke, it looks like John Scalzi was cured of his Straight White Male Author Disease before he wrote this! This is a genuinely fun book about regular people!
It was OK. I think it ended up exactly like Scalzi intended, like a pop song. A very quick read, not to deep, and you'll forget most details a few days after you read it. But a line or two or the beat might stick with you long after. If he ever returns to this world, I hope he changes the style and gives everything more depth. It was OK for this short book, but it gets a bit annoying after a while. Recommended if you've enjoyed the general style of Scalzi's other books or like Kaiju and want a slightly different story involving them.
Hacía tiempo que no leía algo divertido de verdad. KPS es una novela muy entretenida, como ver una película, donde el humor es constante y las referencias a cultura pop abundantes. Se lee rápido y se agradece que sea una historia cerrada, aunque creo que no me importaría volver a este universo de científicos que se matan por cuidar con mimo de monstruos como edificios.
Voy a seguir leyendo alguna novela más de Scalzi antes de pasar a otra cosa.
It was a fun read with some really good moments. While I liked the background, the current events in the book felt a bit too forced. I also wanted to learn a lot more about the kaiju and their world.
Still, it was very entertaining and after having read a lot of trilogies and series in the past, it was refreshing to read a stand-alone book.
This is another entertaining Covid 'time period' novel. It is about an interesting parallel universe; a tale designed to help both the author and reader find a semblance of normalcy after years of pandemic. By the way, this is a good story as well.
For me, this is a classic Scalzi oneshot book. Fun premise, snappy dialogue, snarky characters. There's a good quote in the Author's Note at the end about the process of writing this book, that I think describes the book really well:
As a writer I feel grateful to this novel, because writing it was restorative. KPS is not, and I say this with absolutely no slight intended, a brooding symphony of a novel. It’s a pop song. It’s meant to be light and catchy, with three minutes of hooks and choruses for you to sing along with, and then you’re done and you go on with your day, hopefully with a smile on your face.
I think that's both its strength and its weaknesses. It's not mind-blowing or overly complex--it's a nice snack of a book that doesn't overstay its welcome. I'm not sure it's what I'd consider a "Hugo …
For me, this is a classic Scalzi oneshot book. Fun premise, snappy dialogue, snarky characters. There's a good quote in the Author's Note at the end about the process of writing this book, that I think describes the book really well:
As a writer I feel grateful to this novel, because writing it was restorative. KPS is not, and I say this with absolutely no slight intended, a brooding symphony of a novel. It’s a pop song. It’s meant to be light and catchy, with three minutes of hooks and choruses for you to sing along with, and then you’re done and you go on with your day, hopefully with a smile on your face.
I think that's both its strength and its weaknesses. It's not mind-blowing or overly complex--it's a nice snack of a book that doesn't overstay its welcome. I'm not sure it's what I'd consider a "Hugo best novel" and I also wish it had about 300% more characterization by volume, but it was still a fun ride.
I read this a couple of days ago and, like every other Scalzi novel I’ve read, I remember mildly enjoying it but already forgotten most of it. I think the problem is that Scalzi isn’t a very visual or emotional writer and mostly tells his stories through snappy dialogue. Which he’s good at, but not in a way that sticks with me
It was a fun book. I don't think its his best book, which to me is Androids Dream, Old Mans War, or Agent to the stars. But its a fun book.
It defiantly has a bit of a Cory Doctorow feel, with the random modern technology thrown in. Plex. Discord. NFC. Local Wifi. Etc. Not a bad thing, just not what I really expected so much.
The whole thing about the first person narrator having no gender at all was really interesting. A couple places felt off, like the character had a gender in the first draft, but only like two places. Using Jaime instead of a pronoun in some locations felt awkward, but rarely and easy to overlook.
I would absolutely recommend to other people, especially since I essentially read it in one day.
This is written and set in late 2020. Much like Netflix' Glass Onion, it uses COVID in the backdrop, and then gets onto its main bit. This is about as much COVID as I want in a book.
Equally you get the feeling that Scalzi has a lot to say about US politics and is resisting only dropping a few things before getting back to his main hobby of dropping his favourite nerds in as backing mentions (or ship names in Old Man's War).
This was exactly the right amount of silly for me, I didn't quite get into Redshirts. It gets a bit close when they discuss how kaiju are tropes but then follows with a Peter-Hamilton-level exposition dump about how the pretend science works.
Who cares, there are kaiju, and also a bunch of characters who respect others' chosen pronouns. It's like a much snarkier Becky Chambers book.
This was written as catharsis after the stress and trauma of 2020-21, and reading it was equally cathartic. The author calls it a pop song of a book, and that’s exactly right. It might not be Bach but it has a good beat and I’ll be humming it for months. If you’re looking for catharsis too, you could do much worse.
The most Okay book I've read this year. It's fine. It's very much a novel for your geeky boyfriend that doesn't really get into reading. The audiobook is narrated by Will Wheaton. If that's exciting to you, you'll like the book. If that makes you sign and have Ready Player One flashbacks, maybe skip this one.
Jamie lifts things.
Is this a fun ride with lots of satisfaction, a good story and a quick pace. Definitely. Is this a good book? No, not really. Scalzi is an amazing storyteller, but not a particularly good writer. (Having said that, he is far better than he used to be, and he's even commented on problems with his writing that he has tried to correct.) I started this as a light vacation read and it performed exactly as expected.
This is a fun read. The author wrote it as an antidote for dark times and succeeded, much as we all might wish 2020 hadn’t happened.
