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.
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.
Is this a fun ride with lots of satisfaction, a good story and a quick pace. Definitely. Is this a good book? No, not really. Scalzi is an amazing storyteller, but not a particularly good writer. (Having said that, he is far better than he used to be, and he's even commented on problems with his writing that he has tried to correct.) I started this as a light vacation read and it performed exactly as expected.
If snarky, self-aware dialog and giant alien monsters in alternate dimensions are your thing, this is your book. It's got humor (of course), adventure, and bad guys you really want to punch in the face.
It's nice to have some moral clarity in a story, and also giant monsters who breath nuclear fire.
