Brooke already covered a lot of this in her earlier post "Starter Villian - John Scalzi"  , so I'm basically just going to echo what she said there. This book was a lot of fun. I've read a lot of Scalzi's books over the years, and my favorites are always ones like these, where he infuses a lot of humor into an already creative premise. The idea of a random dude inheriting his estranged uncle's business empire, only to discover that business empire is that of a supervillain (complete with volcano lair) is such a great premise for a book, and I love the fact that Charlie, while clearly not cut out for a professional life of villainy, does manage to discover something about himself in the process, and even manages to do some good with his newfound lot in life.

There are so many parts of this book that are just laugh-out-loud funny. The humor is an acquired taste, for sure... a lot of people will probably find this book a little juvenile... but, honestly, if you pick up a book called Starter Villain with a picture of a cat wearing a business suit on the cover and you're expecting something other than a cheesy, silly quick read, then I don't know what to tell you. This was a really fun read, and even more fun reading it together with friends. The number of times Tornado Dodger or JayNaNoOhNo would send a text with something completely random like "MANUCENTRIC WORLDVIEW" and then, a few hours later I'd get to that part in the book and laugh out loud, was priceless.

Highly recommended for any fans of lighthearted sci-fi comedy.

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Created Feb 28, 2024 at 1:59pm • Submit your own review...