The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What is this book? It’s a love-letter to science fiction nerds. It shares narrative bits with Jurassic Park. It’s a reminder of how disruptive 2020 was in every day.

I had a lot of fun with this story. I think the only criticism (which is kind of a hidden praise) is that I felt it ended too quickly. We learned the premise and the world and then the climax came and it was all over. I think it may be that, as can be the case with a short story or novella, that the house of cards would have come crashing down if the story went on too much longer. There was a lot of “don’t think about it” hand-wavy things in the setup and maybe they wouldn’t survive strict scrutiny. Scalzi said he created a pop song of a novel and he’s not wrong. He also created a bit of a time capsule of a crazy time that most of the creative world is pretending didn’t happen.

It’s a fast read and if you like Scalzi’s fun, sarcastic style, you’ll enjoy this.

I heard from someone that a lot of the reviews on Audible mention that it’s too political. I don’t know what book they read or if they’re talking about the afterward. Yeah, the afteward is political, but nothing different from what Scalzi talks about on his blog all the time. The story itself hints obliquely at a few things, but I’m positive that in another few years, it’s going to over the heads of any readers who weren’t alive in 2020. The book itself is really only political in the sense of finding techbro CEOs to be jerks.

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