Starter Villain

Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind …

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.

5 editions

eBook, 268 pages

English language

Published Sept. 19, 2023 by Tor Books.

ASIN:: B0B9KVXCQ6

Reviews

technicat@bookwyrm.social reviewed Starter Villain by John Scalzi

no kaiju, but there are cats

No rating

This was a popcorn read, finished it in a couple of days. At first I felt like I was reading the author's social media feed, the protagonist spends the first couple of chapters complaining about the usual stuff (lot of digs at techbros), but if anyone can turn that into a romp of a novel, Scalzi can. And there are cats. Stick around for the bonus short story at the end (also an afterword where he explains the book was late because covid scrambled his brain for three months, so I guess I got off easy, I just lost my taste for eggs).