REVIEW: Starter Villain (book) by John Scalzi

Starter Villain is a mix of humor and fantasy. I bought my copy new.

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.

REVIEW: The Kaiju Preservation Society (book) by John Scalzi

The Kaiju Preservation Society is humorous sci-fi. I bought my copy brand new.

Review:

Jamie Gray is confident that he's going to ace his six-month performance evaluation for füdmüd, a food delivery app. Too bad his CEO's a massive jerk and he never stood a chance. Six months later, he's one of the company's delivery drivers, scraping by with no benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic. When he's offered a job by an old acquaintance, Tom, he jumps at it, even though all Tom can tell him is that it's an "animal rights organization," very hush-hush, and he'll be expected to lift things.

Sometime later, Jamie learns that his new employer is the Kaiju Preservation Society. Their job involves traveling to another Earth via a portal and studying and generally keeping an eye on the giant monsters (kaiju) that call that world home. Certain circumstances can cause the barrier between their world and ours to thin, so the KPS both protects our world from the kaiju and the kaiju from us.

Some very unusual circumstances result in a pregnant kaiju nesting on one of those thin spots. For various reasons, this wouldn't normally be a problem, except someone on our side of the barrier has plans for her.

REVIEW: The Dispatcher (audiobook) by John Scalzi, narrated by Zachary Quinto

The Dispatcher is speculative fiction. I listened to it via Audible - I believe I added it to my library at some point when it was free.

Review:

In the world of this story, something happened 8+ years ago that changed how death works. When someone is killed (or murdered?) by another person, instead of staying dead they pop out of existence and reappear, naked and alive, in their own home, wherever in the world that happens to be. Well, most of the time. There's a one in a thousand chance that they'll stay dead.

No one knows how this change came to be, or why, but it has resulted in the creation of a new job, Dispatcher. Dispatchers are people trained and licensed to kill people who are about to die, so that they can come back to life. Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher substituting for another Dispatcher at a hospital. It seems like a normal enough assignment until he's roped into an investigation into the disappearance of the Dispatcher he was substituting for.

REVIEW: Redshirts (book) by John Scalzi

Redshirts is science fiction. My review includes a few slight spoilers, but they start off with a warning so they should be skippable. If you're worried, I'd suggest reading this review on Booklikes, Goodreads, or LibraryThing, where I'm able to use spoiler tags.

Review:

Redshirts stars Ensign Andrew Dahl, newly assigned to the starship Intrepid. It doesn’t take long for him to notice that something weird is going on. Everyone reacts strangely to any mention of away missions, and the Intrepid’s crew has a much higher than normal mortality rate. In an effort to avoid a dramatic and untimely death, Dahl works together with several other new crew members and discovers things that seem too impossible and bizarre to be true.

I went into this book expecting it to be a combination black comedy and Star Trek parody. It started off that way, but then it morphed into something that packed more of an emotional punch than I expected.

The Android's Dream (audiobook) by John Scalzi, narrated by Wil Wheaton

The Android's Dream is humorous science fiction. I got it through Audible.

Warning: this review includes spoilers.

Review:

I should have reviewed this right after I finished listening to it, but I just wanted to move on to something else. My memories of certain details may be a bit fuzzy, but I'll do the best I can.

The story: A human diplomat figures out how to use his own farts to get revenge against the Nidu diplomat who played a part in his father's death. The incident results in both diplomats' deaths and might lead to war, unless Earth's government is able to locate a breed of sheep known as “Android's Dream” and present it to the Nidu for use in their upcoming coronation ceremony. Unfortunately, someone's been killing off every Android's Dream sheep in existence. Harry Creek, a war hero and brilliant hacker, will have to push his skills to the limit in order to locate the last remaining suitable specimen and save Earth.

Lock In (e-book) by John Scalzi

Lock In is a sci-fi thriller. It was one of my library e-book checkouts.

Review:

Approximately 24 years prior to this book's present, the first Haden's syndrome cases began appearing. Many people got sick and died. Some got better and experienced no permanent effects. However, a portion of those who survived the second stage experienced lock in – they were still alive, but were essentially trapped inside bodies they could no longer control. An even smaller number of those who survived the second stage were outwardly unchanged, but had the ability to become Integrators, people who could allow those who were locked in to briefly borrow their bodies. Decades later, the disease still has no reliable vaccine.

Chris Shane is one of the best-known Hadens in the U.S., maybe on the entire planet. He became locked in when he was only a baby and was one of the first Hadens to regularly use a threep, an android body. In the book's present, he has joined the FBI in an effort to get out of his family's shadow and be more than a Haden celebrity. His very first day on the job includes a man who was possibly murdered by an Integrator, and a bombing at a facility researching drugs that might allow Hadens to have voluntary control of their bodies again. Meanwhile, tensions between Hadens and non-Hadens are rising as a bill is scheduled to go into effect that will cut many of the programs and subsidies that Hadens have depended on.