264 pages
English language
Published April 5, 2022
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.
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.
You know, just this thing to be consumed between real books... Having read it, I feel eager to tackle something better, richer, more sublime. The premise warrants the three stars. The characters are interchangeable and the plot's completely predicable. The fun is in seeing how he fleshes out the premise. Occasionally the dialogue is funny, though it has that quality that writers who were too influenced by Douglas Adams has. But does anyone read Scalzi for the quality of his prose? It feels a little beside the point.
I dunno, the concept was cool. On the other hand, every character had about the same personality, which wore thin as the book went on. It also suffered from what other reviewers have (accurately) termed a 'B-movie action plot' that was both shallow and predictable. Until this, I had been generally enjoying this book. It wasn't mind-blowing, but it was decently fun. Scalzi could have gone further, developed more and made something truly unique and worth recommending. Unfortunately, this just fell short.
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.
Good clean popcorn fun. Just what I needed.
This is 100% pop fiction, but enjoyed every moment of it. Reminded me of how much I enjoyed Redshirts. Well written and fantastically fun.
Scalzi described this book as a pop song rather than a symphony, and that's an apt description. It's a catchy, fun pop song that is stuck in my head and I find myself wanting to revisit. I haven't had this much fun since Agent to the Stars!
