Review:
Charlie is a divorced former business reporter who is, at best, barely scraping by as a substitute teacher. The best thing in his life right now is his cat, Hera. When his estranged uncle, Jake, dies of pancreatic cancer, the only reason Charlie is aware of it is because Jake was a billionaire, and even boring billionaires get mentioned in the news when they die.
The news is barely a blip in Charlie's crumbling life, until Mathilda Morrison, Jake's former assistant, shows up on Charlie's doorstep with Jake's last request, that Charlie represent him at his memorial service. It seems like a relatively simple thing and comes with a reward that Charlie can't refuse, so he agrees...and eventually learns that his uncle was involved in a lot more than just parking garages. Showing up at Jake's memorial service puts a target on Charlie's back. Fortunately for Charlie, he's just inherited Uncle Jake's entire supervillain empire, complete with talented employees like Morrison, spy cats and dolphins, and a volcano lair.
This reminded me of Scalzi's The Kaiju Preservation Society, in that the bulk of the book was devoted to the main character's amusing introductions to/explorations of this new world/situation he's found himself in, with a flurry of activity and plot near the end.
That's not necessarily a complaint - I enjoyed Charlie's bemused efforts to learn about what his uncle was really up to. I particularly liked the scenes involving either the cats or the dolphins. It was pretty clear that Charlie wasn't so much actively involved in things as he was being swept along by them, though, and I couldn't help but wonder what Jake's many extremely competent employees were thinking as Charlie attempted to get even a basic understanding of what was going on. (Fortunately, that's something that's addressed later on.)
Cat lovers will probably appreciate this book the most. There were some really nice "would my cat still want to be around me if they had other options?" moments between Charlie and his cats.
All in all, I enjoyed this, although the ending was a little disappointing until Scalzi saved it with the cats.
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