Starter Villain

John Scalzi

Sep 2023 · Sold by Tor Books

About this ebook

Now a New York Times bestseller!

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place.

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 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.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Ratings and reviews

Competently written but ultimately I didn't like it. The author attempts a "fish out of water" story with the main character who's in over his head when thrust into a world of villainy. The concept is accomplished but I feel the execution is lacking. It left a bad taste in my mouth how the main character barely grows over the course of the story and is manipulated from start to finish by everyone including his allies. The author definitely has clear a voice and a handle on dialogue, which elevates this to 3 stars. The book is probably more enjoyable if you're a cat person. I'm a dog person.

I am so confused by this book. The writing is good, but we are introduced to a protagonist in a banal mundane existence who is thrust into one filled with fantastical things, then we are introduced to the most mundane villains to ever exist, and when everything is resolved it turns out that literally nothing the protagonist did mattered and if you remove him from the story everything would have ended the same way.

Cute. Good pacing, solid writing, acceptable characterization. There are some major issues with how well things go over, and it's written overly snappy for it to be realistic, but it's a comedy so forgiven. Ultimately it's short and sweet, and makes its point well. Scalzi has a decent handle on how to do comedy, and wields it well enough here. I'd love more women, as there's a distinct sexist bent, but you can't have everything.

About the author

JOHN SCALZI is one of the most popular SF authors of his generation. His debut, Old Man's War, won him the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, Redshirts (which won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel), The Last Emperox, and 2022's The Kaiju Preservation Society. Material from his blog, Whatever, has earned him two other Hugo Awards. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.