Thursday, March 3, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

 




Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on March 15, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.    


John Scalzi is one of the most successful modern SciFi/Fantasy authors out there, at least from the subset of writers who haven't had major works made into major TV shows or motion pictures (Yet).  At one point in 2015-2016, I went on a big kick of reading Scalzi novels, from his entire Old Man's War series to his Hugo Award winning Redshirts to some of his other works, and I've now read 11 Scalzi books prior to this one.  And well, outside of Redshirts and maybe the Old Man's War series, I've kind of come down in my opinion on Scalzi - his works are always enjoyable and entertaining, and often have really relevant underlying themes (the dangers of capitalism, overlooking dangerous environmental disasters for short term gain, etc.) but they rarely go more than skin deep into those themes and I never really find myself blown away anymore.  

And The Kaiju Preservation Society is pretty much another great example of that.  To be fair, Scalzi admits in his acknowledgements in the end that he intended this to be a light enjoyable book because that was all he could manage during the pandemic, and well he's certainly done that here: a book featuring a bunch of scientists (and its protagonist dropout) going to a parallel world to help protect the nuclear powered Kaiju found there from each other....and from rich and powerful humans with dumb ambitions.  It's a short novel again, and it's stand alone, and again it's highly enjoyable and fun at times.  On the other hand again there really isn't anything spectacular about it, even from the standpoint of being a light humorous and enjoyable ride, so yeah


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
Jamie Gray, science fiction fan and PhD drop-out, thought they were going to make a big splash by giving their boss, the Rich founder of a delivery-app company, an idea to make millions during the Pandemic, an idea that would get them major props.   Instead Jamie was fired, their boss took that idea for themselves, and Jamie found themselves making deliveries to try and get by.  But when Jamie makes one such delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, they find themselves offered a job at Tom's unnamed "animal rights organization" doing gruntwork, and Jamie could not sign on to do anything else but delivery more readily.  

But what Jamie couldn't have known is that organization is the Kaiju Preservation Society, a multinational society supported by governments and wealthy donors that secretly travels to an alternate Earth to study and protect the giant monsters - the Kaiju - on that human-free Earth.  It's a dangerous job, as the Kaiju are like nothing else on our Earth, and work in very strange ways...and that's not even talking about the fact that they contain natural nuclear reactors as part of their own bodies.  But it's a job Jamie finds themselves at home with, even despite the crazy dangers it poses.

After all, the biggest danger may not be the Kaiju, but the rich assholes back home who know about them, and have delusions of grandeur about what the Kaiju represent, people who Jamie is surely far away from in an alternate world....right? 
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The Kaiju Preservation Society is told from the first person perspective of Jamie*, a person who very much fits into the world we've all gotten used to during the pandemic.  It's a world where the pandemic has thrown people for a loop, and Jamie is yet another person spit out by a rich spoiled venture capitalist brat who didn't even realize a good idea until someone fed it to him, which he then took advantage of by selling out of his company in the first place.  God knows we've seen this world before, and well, the Kaiju Preservation Society takes advantage of that to ground this otherwise escapist fare.

*Note: Like the Lock In series, The Kaiju Preservation Society deliberately uses its first person perspective to never gender Jamie, so they could be referred to with really any pronoun.  I'm using "they" in this review as a result.  

And well escapist fare it is, as the majority of the plot is Jamie and their scientist friends discovering the Kaiju on the other Earth with the Kaiju Preservation Society, getting into bonkers and fun situations, and dealing with the aftermaths.  It's the type of fun and creativity that Scalzi is best at, and the tone of Jamie and their friends as they deal with the changing conditions - from Kaiju Nuclear Reactors exploding, to using pheromones to try and get Kaiju to mate yet not trying to get killed by them in the helicopter they're spraying them with (the helicopter pilot is a lot of fun), to dealing with Kaiju parasites....well Scalzi knows how to make this highly entertaining. 

And then there's the cartoonish antagonist, who fits right into both our world and this one, and will surprise absolutely no one by being one of the rich assholes who knows about the program and has his own selfish designs on the Kaiju.  There's nothing surprising about him turning out to be the antagonist, but Scalzi makes it enjoyable to see him get his comeuppance repeatedly, and makes the final confrontation highly entertaining.  

Again, nothing about this is a serious book, even with anti-capitalist and exploratory themes underlying the plot, the point here is just to be fun.  And well, The Kaiju Preservation Society is fun, so it's hard to say you'll be disappointed to read it.  It just isn't something that I'd really say I loved or would highly recommend.  It's popcorn, never disappointing, but never memorable either.  

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