The Kaiju Preservation Society

by

eBook, 268 pages

English language

Published March 15, 2022 by Tor Books.

ASIN:
B0927B1P8L
4 stars (3 reviews)

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization.” Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.

What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm, human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble.

It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society who have found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

2 editions

reviewed The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Think of this as sorbet

3 stars

You know, just this thing to be consumed between real books... Having read it, I feel eager to tackle something better, richer, more sublime. The premise warrants the three stars. The characters are interchangeable and the plot's completely predicable. The fun is in seeing how he fleshes out the premise. Occasionally the dialogue is funny, though it has that quality that writers who were too influenced by Douglas Adams has. But does anyone read Scalzi for the quality of his prose? It feels a little beside the point.

reviewed The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

Mindless fun

5 stars

This is written and set in late 2020. Much like Netflix' Glass Onion, it uses COVID in the backdrop, and then gets onto its main bit. This is about as much COVID as I want in a book.

Equally you get the feeling that Scalzi has a lot to say about US politics and is resisting only dropping a few things before getting back to his main hobby of dropping his favourite nerds in as backing mentions (or ship names in Old Man's War).

This was exactly the right amount of silly for me, I didn't quite get into Redshirts. It gets a bit close when they discuss how kaiju are tropes but then follows with a Peter-Hamilton-level exposition dump about how the pretend science works.

Who cares, there are kaiju, and also a bunch of characters who respect others' chosen pronouns. It's like a much snarkier Becky Chambers book.

avatar for aneel

rated it

4 stars