Brooke , Jayne , and I all read this together after really enjoying "Starter Villain"   by the same author, which was a prior group read. Brooke and Jayne ended up finishing way before I did, though. For some reason, I just had a really hard time getting into this book. Scalzi has a knack for really inventive plots and clever writing, but I wasn't really feeling this one, at least at the beginning. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it begins with a startup tech company worker getting laid off and having to deliver takeout food during the pandemic, which is kind of a period of time that I'm still not super-enthused about revisiting, even in my imagination. The part of the narrative where he's learning the ropes in the alternate Earth where the kaiju live also felt a little tedious with all the scientific explanations and "learning curve" that the characters go through.

Once I got a hundred pages in, the story started picking up and I enjoyed myself a lot more. It probably took me two weeks to read the first hundred pages, and two days to read the last 172. Overall, it was a fun read but I didn't think it was particularly great. It was actually Scalzi himself, in the author's note, that captured what I was thinking. He said this book, for him, was a "pop song," meant to be light and catchy, and then you go on with your day. And, honestly, I felt the exact same way about the book.

What really struck me, though, was that in the author's note, Scalzi also recounted his life around this time. He had been planning on writing a much more serious book, then the pandemic happened and he couldn't focus on writing it. Then he was just getting back on track and January 6th happened, and his focus got derailed all over again. Ultimately, he scrapped that book and - for the first time in his career - told his editor he was going to miss a delivery date for a promised manuscript. And then, when he finally came to terms with letting that project go, inspiration struck and he wrote this book instead.

And, in that sense, I totally get it. This book doesn't have to be a revelation. It doesn't have to be his best work, or my favorite book of his. It was something he wrote to push through the effects of the pandemic and other stuff that was preoccupying his mind. Instead of writing a "very serious book" he wrote something fun and light and entertaining. In that respect, he succeeded and I almost enjoy the book more now knowing that was his intention in writing it as well.

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Created Jan 18, 2025 at 6:40pm • Submit your own review...