Imagine having an estranged uncle die and leave everything to you. Imagine that you learn that “everything” is his supervillain empire…
Starter Villain
Author: John Scalzi
Pages: 288
Format: Paperback
Published: September 19, 2023
Publisher: Tor Books
View on Goodreads
Date Completed: November 6, 2024
My rating: 
Thoughts
Earlier this year I left my job and have since rejoined my previous life, already in progress – Moss Adams. Soon after, I started a book club with folks from work called the Mossy Pages Book Club. This novel was the first pick and, let’s be honest, I really only picked it for the cat on the cover.
I thought I hadn’t heard of this author before until I realized he wrote a book called Redshirts which has been on my radar for a while now. Since completing this book, I have obtained a copy of Redshirts to read in the next few months.
My history with comedic novels isn’t very long. I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy earlier this year and… didn’t really enjoy it as much as I’d hoped. I gave that one 3 stars, but every time I think about it I wonder if I was too generous. So Starter Villain had an uphill battle from the start.
Similar to Hitchhiker, this book had some snark to it, but whereas the snark in Hitchhiker was widespread, it was used here as needed and to great effect. The situations that our main character, Charlie, gets into are wacky, but somehow feel grounded. Without going into too much spoilery detail, I’m not sure how better to describe it. Once you get to a point of suspension of disbelief, the story really takes off. It feels like the best of a James Bond story, from a different point of view – that being a villain new to the craft.
My only main issue with this story is that Charlie almost feels too smart for his own good. While he does realistically take some time to realize that his cat is [redacted], he picks up on how to be a supervillain pretty quickly. I’m not sure if I’d wanted him to be a bungling idiot the whole time; that could be funny, but it’s a bit of a tired trope. But during certain parts, he gets the upper hand right away with the other villains. And those villains are also not complete fools.
That said, I really enjoyed the humor in this book. There aren’t too many books that I’ve read that get me laughing, but there were certain scenes in here that had me in LOL’ing pretty good. And it all came down to the humor fitting the story – funny situations instead of characters who are too witty or weird for their own good.
All in all I give this one 4.5 out of 5 stars. I didn’t really get into it, but while the ending was fantastic, there was a lot of telling and not showing. I don’t recall there being a lot of clues to help the reader figure anything out about what was really going on. But the way it was told was pretty dang funny.
