Starter Villain

By: John Scalzi

Narrated by: Wil Wheaton

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, hyperintelligent 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.

©2023 John Scalzi (P)2023 Audible, Inc.

I bought this for the cat

I saw a cat and the title and let my imagination run. I assumed an Dr. Evil type supervillain with an evil talking cat, etc. unfortunately this is a total comedy, relying on silly sardonic comparisons to expected villain organizations from bond movies with a modern twist. The world is set in a 1:1 comparison to our world (basically the same) with organizations headed by "villains" (basically Tech CEOs) who fulfill certain niches to keep the world powers in a stalemate. If you were looking for a more comic book version of a villain then prepare to be disappointed like I was. It's a good dry absurdist comedy for the casual listener on their drive to work needing a background distraction from the monotony. Don't expect much story or world building from this. I'm not a fan of Wil Wheaton narrative direction. It's hard to discern who's speaking, whether the speaker is feminine, and if everything is supposed to be spoken like an episode of Seinfeld. Overall it's fine, I just feel the story could of been better told with a less expressively masculine tone and more inflections with the different genders lines. I liked the cats.

The villain we love to love

The story is about an ordinary person being thrown into the cut-throat villain/corporate world, surviving it, and thriving in it, with good economic and financial references to make it real (and I learned a thing or two). Don't be deceived by the cat on the cover, it's a book about people and humanity.

This book is filled with funny dialogues, relatable characters, surprising yet sensible plots (to the degree of a fantasy book), and a villain we love to love, plus dark money, conspiracy theories, and backstabbing. There are some over-the-top plots, such as people trying to stab a corpse at a funeral (in a deeply entertaining way).

There is an actual scientific basis for our (especially the villains') love for cats, check out "This Is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society" by Kathleen McAuliffe. For the unionized dolphins, check out "Power in the Wild, The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control over Others" by Lee Alan Dugatkin. For the torpedo whales, check out "On the Female of the Species" by Lucy Cooke.

Fun romp

I own all of Scalzi’s books on Audible and as usual enjoy his social satire. Wil Wheaton seemed to yell most of this book—usually I enjoy his narration so was wishing he was a little more nuanced. One minor nitpick—the main cat in the book is described as orange—why is there a gray cat on the cover?

Great story. Very enjoyable.

Why does anyone let Will Wheaton narrate anything? He cannot do voices. Every character, men and women alike sound. Audible, please stop letting him ruin books and get people with talent to narrate stories. Ray Porter, Bonnie Turpin, Jeff Hayes, RC Bray, just about anyone else can do more voices than the single voice will wheaten does.

Terrific

I couldn’t stop listening to this. I ended up staying up all night , something I never do anymore but it was certainly worth it. I have a couple cats that I won’t look at the same now.