#Starter Villain

[torpublishinggroup]

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A guide of books to gift the people in your life and yourself!

For the people looking to put a different kind of magic into their holidays…

The Fragile Threads of Power by V. E. Schwab

For the genre connoisseur with a love for high concepts in short form… 

Africa Risen edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, & Zelda Knight (now in paperback!)

For the treasured party member who’s saved your character’s life many times on TTRPG night…

Bookshops & Bonedust by @travisbaldree

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

For those who love (or possibly are 👀) gay werewolves

Wolfsong by TJ Klune

For the mutual who devoured the epic highs and lows of Riverdale and craves more…

The Luminaries by Susan Dennard, now in paperback!)

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

For your brave and luckless friend, constantly trapped in transit purgatory and upset about it…

The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw & Richard Kadrey

For the true buckaroos trotting beside you…

Camp Damascus by @drchucktingle

For the friend who says “but have we considered burning it all down?” on an alarming and refreshingly regular basis…

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

For the friend who has a hot date on Friday night (with their book)...

Fall of Ruin and Wrath by Jennifer L. Armentrout

For the avid doodler who sketches plans for their future volcanic villain lair equipped with a space laser…

Starter Villain by @jscalzi

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

Not enough books? We agree. Check out our other GET BOOKT guide.

[wilwheaton]

Yesterday, John Scalzi's latest book, Starter Villain, dropped.

I got to narrate the audiobook! I'm so proud of the work we did together, I made a video to announce it.

[lifblogs]

“My breakfast partner was Hera, an orange-and-white cat who, after I had retreated to my childhood home after the divorce and layoff, had emerged from the backyard bushes and informed me through meowing that she lived with me now.”

Yeah, that’s definitely how cats work!

[booksandchainmail]

Hugo Best Novel Finalists 2024

I've read all 6, so here's my impressions and loose ranking. The numerical ranking is only approximate for now, I'm going to pin it down once we get closer to voting closing. I could see the top two books switching places, or any rotation within books three, four, and five.

The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera This was one of my top books of last year and one of my own nominations. It's a very strange book, twisty and creative, and left me with a lot of thoughts, particularly about how it handles government. I appreciated the mishmash of worldbuilding, all sorts of things that felt incongruous next to each other but somehow fit together. It also felt more literary than most sff novels? I am not normally deeply noticing of language, but I kept coming back to individual turns of phrase here. All books should have a 50-page chapter in the middle where the protagonist wanders through a neverending surrealist prison land.

Some Desperate Glory, by Emily Tesh Another of my nominations, this is a more straightforward exploration of, essentially, the deradicalization of someone raised in an authoritarian military camp. I respect how this book lets Kyr be awful, be completely convinced she is correct, and be defensive and lash out when confronted with her home's issues. I think the ending stumbles a bit, but really I mostly wanted this book to be much, much longer and have Kyr's character arc spread out more. Also, the choice of title and epigraph is excellent.

Translation State, by Ann Leckie Not much to say here, it's a new book in the Imperial Radch universe, I read it when I came out so don't remember detail. I liked the different intersecting plotlines, and particularly the Presger merge-and-devour adolescent instinct

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty This one I hadn't read before but enjoyed. I don't know how deep I'd say it is, but it's fun, a good classic adventure story with a putting-the-crew-back-together plot common to heist narratives. It benefits a lot from its setting: my main takeaway was that the Indian Ocean in medieval times is a criminally underused setting for any kind of nautical/swashbuckling/adventure story.

Witch King, by Martha Wells I read this one when it came out, and remember liking it a lot. The two intertwined narratives, set centuries apart, worked well for me to let the backstory unfold to inform the main plot as it progressed. I think I preferred the backstory narrative? But that might be due to also having the present narrative, since my favorite part was seeing how the echoes of relationships are still going on centuries after we get to see them form

Starter Villain, by John Scalzi I did not like this. I had some criticism last year for Scalzi's Kaiju Preservation Society, on the grounds that it was fun but not substantive enough for an award. But at least with that one I enjoyed reading it! My main thought while reading Starter Villain was "Well, at least it's short." I think my main problem with this is tonal: it doesn't commit enough to the over-the-top goofiness of "guy inherits his uncle's supervillain empire" and keeps trying to ground it in what an actual secretive genius billionaire pulling strings behind the scenes for his own nefarious purposes might look like, but then any attempts to actually be serious with the grounded stakes and world established kept running into the fact that it also featured sentient cats and talking dolphins! Also, I couldn't stop noticing that the protagonist talks the same way as the major supporting characters, which is the same way the protagonist talked in KPS last year

[wiickian]

Me when somebody barely mentions my interests

[roseunspindle]

That's not why we have cats. We have cats because they amuse us and because otherwise our clothes would lack the texture only cat hair can provide. - Starter Villian, Chapter 2

[scify65]

Starter Villain is off to a bang.

Also, is it too much to ask to have the ability to attract small, intelligent kittens who want nothing more than to climb onto your shoulder and purr?

[merpshire]

Been a Hot Second™️ since I made a reading post so I'll just give some quick thoughts on what I've read since last time!

First up is that I FINALLY finished Words of Radiance!! I'm sure it's been said to death at this point but the world building in The Stormlight Archives is insanely good. The amount of detail and thought that's clearly gone in to the world is bonkers. They're long books so there's lots of room for detail, explanation, and characterization and despite that the pacing still feels great. I'm really looking forward to Oathbringer but I am planning to read Elantris and the Ars Arcanum before I get to it. Book 5 should be long since released before I'm anywhere ready to start it. XD

My book club chose to read House of Leaves. I can't say I'm sure HOW we chose it considering two people got 50 pages in and said, "I hate this and I'm not going to read it." The person who recommended it only got about halfway through before the meeting. I was one of two people who finished it and I quite enjoyed it! It was unsettling but at no point did I find it particularly frightening. For those inclined, you could do tons of overwrought literary analysis and give the book the academic treatment. One of my favorite parts of reading it was how much the book itself pokes fun at literary analysis and how academics can take research and analysis from detailed into absurd. Definitely not a book for everyone.

The only other thing I can remember reading right now is Starter Villain by John Scalzi. It was a quick little spy-esque story that I can only describe as "brain candy." It was light, fun, digestible, and didn't ask you to do a whole lot more than enjoy the ride (which I did). If you need a couple hours of escapism, this book does the trick.

Up next for me is Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, since that's what book club chose for November. I'm ~50 pages in and from page 1 it's clear that good ol' Miyazaki used the setting and idea of the book to tell the story he wanted to tell instead of faithfully reproducing the book. And frankly, great. Looking forward to finishing the book!

[error-core-animations]

starter villain is so good omg. perfect protagonist, very fun guy to follow around. I'm assuming everyone here is as taken with divorce as I am btw (he's divorced)

[abybweisse]

HPB haul from 9/22/23

Back on the 22nd last month, I made another run to Half Price Books.

I've never read or watched The Handmaid's Tale, so here's a chance to read it, at least. I've watched The Princess Bride many times, but I've never read it, so when I saw this I had to get a copy. And I'm hoping the cult, serial killer, and Tesla books come in handy for Black Butler analysis. I recently teased about Scalzi's latest book here, but it honestly sounds like a fun read, so I picked up a copy of that, too.

Flame Tree publishing puts out some effing beautiful book editions and journals. The copy of Moby Dick at the top, the two small myth books to the lower right, and the two journals (one is open) are all by Flame Tree. They publish all those lovely Epic Tales, Gothic Fantasy, and Classic Stories books I have a large collection of, too. The smaller copy of Moby Dick is from that other large collection I've been buying up, published by Chiltern. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is part of the Chartwell editions I've started collecting. The Homer box set is quite nice, and I also broke down and bought these Jane Austen and Shakespeare paper dolls with sticker sets.

I'm just not sure what to do with the dolls. I might place them on sturdy backing, cut them out, and give them supports to stand on the shelves.

Also hoping the Arthurian myth and Egyptian myth books might prove useful in Black Butler analysis, though I do have other books about those topics.

[living400lbs]

Discussing some billionaires:

They're "[a] bunch of dudes born into money who used that money to take advantage of other people to make even more money. It works great until they start believing that being rich makes them smart, and then they get in trouble."

- from Starter Villain by John Scalzi

[torpublishinggroup]

This advertisement is for Starter Villain, a new science fiction adventure from Hugo Award–winning author John Scalzi.

Meet the new boss.

JK this cat doesn’t work for Tor. At least, we’re pretty sure, with remote work it’s hard to tell who is and isn’t a cat. The person posting this could be a cat. You’d literally never know.

But we do know you should check out Starter Villain by John Scalzi, because it does have hyper intelligent cats working for a villainous organization.

WHAT THE BOOK IS ABOUT

When divorced substitute teacher Charlie’s long-lost uncle Jake dies, he’s not expecting much. Certainly not to inherit a supervillain business, complete with an island volcano lair, giant laser death rays, lava pits, and hyper-intelligent talking spy cats.

But it gets worse.

Because his uncle wasn’t just a supervillain. He was a supervillain who was in the middle of trying to take down the other supervillains. Somewhere along the way he decided that the rich, soulless predators back by multinational corporations and venture capital were a bad idea. And they needed to be stopped.

And now they’re after Charlie.

[riverlark]

Current Read:

I picked this up months ago (more because I saw it and went oh! Will Wheaton! I didn’t know he did audiobooks! Neat!) and have been listening to snippets between books I’m more interested in while I was waiting for them to become available and it’s been… eh. Okay. (Mr. Wheaton is an Excellent Reader it’s the genre of the book that’s a bit of a departure for me) I’m mildly engaged, it’s good background noise while I’m working—

RECORD SCRATCH

1 Hour and 42 minutes

This book now has my

Undivided Attention

[knifefightingbears]

Starter Villain is a good book

[spellscribe]

I'm up to chapter 4 of the Starter Villain audiobook and at this point, I'm pretty sure it's a book about two cats and happens to have a human side character.

[semper-legens]

37. Starter Villain, by John Scalzi

Owned: No, library Page count: 262 My summary: Charlie is a substitute teacher. Recently divorced, no money, and his only companion is his cat. When his estranged billionaire uncle dies, it's barely on his radar. Until, that is, he gets a mysterious request to attend his uncle's funeral, and assassins show up to stab his corpse. Now he's embroiled in the world of villainy, and there's no going back. Not while the dolphins are striking, at least... My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

I can't actually remember why I reserved this book. I think it was something I saw online and thought could be fun - a story about a man who suddenly inherits his reclusive uncle's business, only to find out that said uncle was a villain by trade and owns a volcano lair on a private island. What's not to love there? This kind of genre isn't usually my bag, but I came away from this book more enamoured than I thought I was going to be. Sentient cats, unionised dolphins, the secret lives of the wealthy and evil…there was a lot going on here, and I thoroughly enjoyed it all.

Our protagonist is Charlie, a thirty two year old admitted loser working as a substitute teacher after a divorce and falling out of his career as a business journalist. He's affable, snarky, largely in over his head, but warm-hearted and very likeable. Sure, he's a bit of a standard protagonist for this sort of genre, but when he starts actively taking charge and making decisions towards the midpoint of the book, he shows a lot of vibrancy and wit. And he's got his human sides, too. He's genuinely caring to Hera, his cat, he makes concessions to the striking dolphins that get them to listen to him and the company, and he cares about human life and about the downtrodden underclass. When he's in a burning hotel, he goes back for Hera. When confronted with the idea of killing a CIA agent, he's vehemently against it. And when the time comes for a supervillain showdown, he's careful to evacuate the civilians and minimise damage as much as he can. He cares, and that endeared me to him.

So yeah, about those cats and dolphins and such. The worldbuilding for this book is very much James Bond levels of villainy. Charlie's uncle engineered cats and dolphins with a human level of intelligence to use as spies and agents. The reality of this is that they're still treated like animals, which is unfair and unethical for a sapient species, and the book doesn't shy away from that! What was interesting was that, for all the book uses Bond gadgets and similar such nonsense, it was all in a realistic enough way that I could totally buy that this is just what rich men do behind the scenes. Are you telling me that you can't see Elon Musk with a Bond villain business and a volcano island? Exactly.

The plot in and of itself…like I said, this genre isn't really my thing, but it kept me engaged throughout. There's conspiracies within conspiracies regarding the secret league of villains that Charlie's uncle belonged to, and he's been thrust in at the deep end. The various villains are broke and need access to a cache of stolen artworks Charlie's uncle had on the island - Charlie's happy to give them over, as they were stolen by the Nazis and he wants nothing to do with them, but he has to outmaneuver the others who definitely want him dead over it. While also, you know, not enabling horrible rich men any more than they already are. In the words of the prophets, the plot starts coming and it doesn't stop coming, but I think that's to the book's benefit - keeps the action going and keeps the tension very well, while also managing to have enough downtime to properly humanise and characterise its characters. I had fun, and I'd definitely recommend it!

Next up, something from real life - a defector's tale.