Look, I kind of slept on John Scalzi’s The Kaiju Preservation Society. I got the ARC during the pandemic, read the first scenes set in the last few minutes of pre-pandemic New York, with the protagonist worried about shutdowns and making rent, and I just noped out of it. Sorry, Scalzi, no amount of love for Old Man’s War could make me read more about pandemic life. Just not happening.

But, it’s ok now. I’m no longer in early covid life, where the borders were closing and student visas were getting cancelled, and ESL schools were closing for the duration and then straight-up closing. Instead, I’m in the teacher shortage of late-stage covid life. Any teachers still standing are dancing around our classrooms, TikTok syncing to UNTOUCHABLE. And, ok, I might have done a little dance of joy when I returned to the classroom and moved chairs around for small groups card games. These things too have passed. Ok, I can try a pandemic read now.

Anyway, our hero Jamie has just been laid off from a tech job and starts driving for an UberEats knockoff food delivery app. He’s a deliverator, like Hiro Protagonist in Snow Crash, which is entirely lost on the tech bro founder. Jamie’s delivery life is a pretty standard regular-life opening before the heroic adventure, if you are not ready to cry over the missed opportunities of pandemic life. Jamie delivers a meal to a friend-of-a-friend, Tom, and gets chatting about Tom’s job, doing high-security work for some animal rights organization. Tom offers Jamie a vaguely defined low-level job, but it’s a job! With benefits! That’s not a gig worked deliverator for a terrible tech bro! Of course he takes it because, well, it’s a job. In covid times. Jamie isn’t too worried when the job description stays vague or the job location is vague or that there’s a 6-month contract where he won’t be able to call home or… I loved this part. Readers know that total adventure escapism is coming, while our hero looks forward to paying his student loans by lifting heavy objects or something.

I don’t want to spend too much time talking about the kaiju, because discovering them, their world and their total stunning weirdness along with Jamie and his friends is a real joy. Jamie’s new scientist friends are very smart nerds, having a great time on their research adventure. And that’s the overall mood the story — research adventure. This wonderful feel of exploration and discovery, with a strong streak of nerdiness, is what I always respond to in classic scifi. And this scifi novel even has women characters in it, too! There’s a non-binary character, as well, which I really enjoyed. Queer characters without tragic backstories! Just going around being good at their jobs and having adventures! Yes. Perfect.

As I read this, I thought several times of Charlie in Venus Plus X, the everyday working man who lands in a wild scifi universe. (I will spare any itchy @-ing fingers: I’m fully aware this situation is also found in other novels!) The idea that this new world is just so strange, all the usual rules are off, and there’s the underlying question of whether humanity can be trusted with this knowledge or whether the worst instincts of greed and fear will win out.

The Kaiju Preservation Society is definitely a message scifi, the villain’s an evil billionaire with no consideration for human or kaiju lives. Baddies with money and power who want more money and power feel like a comic book staple. The villain here has a fun bit of backstory, but I forgot his name already. Anyway, Evil Elon Musk is more like a device to power the friendship story here, and and provide a dark, greedy counterpoint to the optimistic discovery of KPS life. Yes, sure, they’ve gotta save the world, but it’s still a friendship story first.

Overall, The Kaiju Preservation Society is a scifi adventure, with a nerdy, loyal friend group at the heart.

I really enjoyed this story! The tone and fast-moving nature of the plot kept me engaged throughout. Though, some readers might find it hits too close to home (despite the Kaiju’s) as it takes place during the pandemic.

A fun read that carries author John Scalzi's voice through a tale of "science" fiction, humor, contemporary lit, horror and COVID genres. And, not too soon. This was a book I needed to read to pick me back up to reading after a brief hiatus. There's no deep message. There's no earth-shattering life transformation. Think Galaxy Quest or even Red Shirts, another of Scalzi's books. It's worth the romp and will hopefully lift your spirits the way it did for me.

One could call The Kaiju Preservation Society a pandemic novel because a) John Scalzi wrote it during the pandemic and b) the pandemic serendipitously leads the main character, Jamie, to a new job that sets the action in motion.

But the book is not about the pandemic. It’s about Kaiju, Godzilla-like monsters who live in an alternate Earth. This alternate Earth is rich in radioactive elements, and the Kaiju produce energy from their own internal biological reactors. This makes them a danger when, say, they end their lives with in nuclear explosion that thins the walls between Earths, but it also makes them an object of fascination for unscrupulous humans seeking new sources of cheap energy.

Read an excerpt of the episode featuring John Scalzi and The Kaiju Preservation Society on Literary Hub.

“So much of the way plant life and animal life on Earth works is through sunlight, which is just another type of radiation,” Scalzi tells me on the new episode of New Books in Science Fiction. “Plants photosynthesize, animals eat plants, other animals eat the animals that eat the plants and so on and so forth. But sooner or later it all comes back to sunlight. The only places where you don’t have that happen are in very specific places where, for example, there are sulfurous heat sources at the bottom of the ocean. And then things have evolved to take advantage of the energy source there. Well, in this alternate Earth, things like uranium and thorium in the crust are another possible energy source. It makes sense to me that life would evolve to take advantage either wholly or in part of that additional energy source. And then, of course, I just built out from there.”

Scalzi has contributed in myriad ways to the art of science fiction through many novels, his past leadership as president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the platform he provides other writers on The Big Idea, a feature that appears regularly on his website. His writing has earned numerous awards, including what was once upon a time known as the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Hugo Award for Best Novel, Hugos for Fan Writer and Best Related Book, and the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

Goodness, this book is fun. It's like a light Ready Player One meets Jurassic Park - full of fun quips, nerdy references, and a quick, adventure plot. The author, at the end of the book, describes how this is the book he needed to write to get through the difficult pandemic years and it's exactly that: an entertaining, escapist ride that many of us need just now.

I firmly believe that beyond anything else, reading should always be fun. If there's one author who can always be trusted to remind their readers of that, it's John Scalzi. The Kaiju Preservation Society is fast-paced and unique, with imperfect, likeable characters and a completely unique setting. It's wonderfully written and an absolute page-turner but beyond anything else, it's FUN. And what more could you want than that? I loved it.

The Kaiju Preservation Society was the perfect book at the right time, I needed something funny, short, and action-packed. John Scalzi delivered the perfect mid-pandemic book for me to read!

Wow, I didn't know I needed this book right now. What a rollicking good time, free of angst and drama (even if it takes place in pandemic times of 2020). I listened to the audiobook and I inhaled it in about two sittings. The jokes come fast and evenly, the action is nicely paced, and Scalzi (again) manages the impressive technical feat of having a narrator of an unspecified gender. If you're a fan of scifi in general or Star Trek specifically, I would definitely check this book out!!

The simple yet effective running gag of the protagonist saying the same line about carrying things over and over surprised me by making me laugh each time. Love all of the details that went into the worldbuilding, including the absolute believability of the work history that started the whole story.

Kaiju Preservation Society is a fun story that includes the pandemic that swept the world but doesn't focus on it's horrors. In the story, the main character loses his job at a startup delivery company, then becomes a delivery driver for them. While on the job he meets an old acquaintance from school who tells him about a job opportunity. Working for the Kaiju Preservation Society. It is then that you start to go on a fantastic journey to a world where kaiju roam around and it is the job of humans to keep them safe.
An absolute delight of a book that is funny, charming and adventurous. There is something in this book for just about every type of reader.

This was a really fun read, a story about a secret organization called the Kaiju Preservation Society (KPS) that has research facilities in an alternative Earth populated by giant monsters. We follow hard-luck Millenial Jamie Gray who is fired from a startup, and stuck delivering food for an Uber-like company. They're suddenly pulled into KPS by an old friend. Jamie's job? "I lift things". Scalzi has a great sense of humor and a strong technical mindset which add up to a book that's wry, surprisingly believable, spot-on with its interplay between Gray and fellow Millenial staffers, and definitely one for your shortlist. Buy it. Read it.

This felt like a big departure from Scalzi's work, but I definitely enjoyed it. It was a little weird, a little confusing, but overall worth the time.

Actual rating 3.5/5 stars.

My dinosaur obsession began at a young age with the [book:Jurassic Park|40604658] movie adaptations and my John Scalzi one a lot more recently, when I became enamoured with his The Interdependency series. The synopsis promised the high thrills, scientific focus, and awe-inspiring creations of Crichton's much-beloved series, combined with Scalzi's strong narrative style and personal flair. I was more than excited!

However, what begun in a highly promising vein soon lessened in heightened emotions and stakes, leading this to be a thoroughly enjoyable but slightly tamer creation than the one I had anticipated.

I appreciated how the pandemic featured in this and I thought it depicted the individual fears of existing in a struggling economy, as well as the greed of the corporations still thriving in it, very well. When the focus shifted from the real world to the one of Scalzi's own creation, it was treated with the same detailed focus and level of authenticity.

I found the creatures that roamed this fictional world a little harder to imagine than their surroundings, due to their immense size and abilities. I loved learning more about them though, endlessly fascinating as they were, as well as the corporation who were monitoring and controlling them. There were some near misses that had me glued to the page and some strange discoveries that had me invested in learning the facts and gaining the truth.

My three-star rating is indicative of my thorough enjoyment in just witnessing all that Sclazi had so lovingly crafted but there did seem to be missing a little late-blooming spark to heighten my emotions towards the novel's conclusion.

I loved this book! A light, easy read. A popcorn movie of a book in the best possible way. Excellent queer representation, too, if that's your thing!

Overall, I did not care much for this book. I have really enjoyed previous books from John Scalzi but this one was a miss for me. Too long with the set up, too many pop culture references that likely won’t age well, and a weird obsession with Snow crash by Neal Stephenson. This one didn’t work for me but hopefully others enjoy it.

Another great read from Scalzi! Scalzi adapts the renewed interest in big monsters in The Kaiju Preservation Society. Full of rich detail, engaging characters, and great dialogue. Definitely recommending to my students.

John Scalzi is on my list of must-reads, and I've been excited for this book since the day it was announced.

Imagine Jurassic Park, but with kaiju. Now imagine that instead of getting the story from the view of visitors, you follow the staff instead. They're doing their best to keep these kaiju safe (and by extension our world), but there are some corporations and individuals who would rather profit off of what the kaiju have to offer.

There's some really great action in this book, and just enough science to make everything hang together in a plausible way. There ends up being some major statements and themes that are a little heavy-handed (environmentalism, the evils of corporations and big business), but none of them ring false.

I highly recommend this book.

I knew I wanted to read this book as soon as I saw the title. I was not led astray. John Scalzi brings you into a world not unlike our own from the past two years of pandemics and precautions. The difference, though, is some people get to go study kaiju and similar creatures across a parallel universe. So yeah, this book is awesome.

I've always been a huge fan of movies featuring dinosaurs and have liked most of the monster/kaiju films that I've seen over the years so I was very intrigued when I saw this book pop up wherever I originally saw it. (It's been so long ago that I requested this that I can't fully remember.) And it was everything I was hoping it would be.

The description of the book gives a basic idea of what the reader will be getting into and I loved how the author used Covid as a framing for the story. It was a catalyst for the narrator losing his job but it wasn't what the story was about and, in a world where we're still dealing with Covid, it was nice to see it mentioned but not the focus.

The story was interesting and sciencey and made good commentary on how humans are honestly the worst when it comes to what animals/monsters are the biggest threat to all species without hitting you over the head with all the minutiae. But, even amongst all the worry and fear the characters have about the situations they are put into, it was still funny and lighthearted and sarcastic and I really enjoyed it.

This is a book I would absolutely recommend to anyone who likes monsters and humor.

I’ll be the first to admit that science fiction is not my fav genre but this book was described as being in a similar vein to Jurassic Park so that intrigued me. I’ve never seen a Godzilla film so I had never heard of Kaiju before. The idea of parallel universes was an interesting concept to me but I feel like this didn’t pull me in because it just wasn’t my genre.