Charlie Fitzer is at a low place in his existence...substitute teacher since his journalism job ended, with the demise of most newspapers; divorced and living in the house he grew up in, owned not just by himself but also his three other half-siblings, who do not like him. He wants to buy a pub, but no one will lend him the money. Then, his Uncle Jake dies. Uncle Jake owns parking garages, a lot of them. His assistant, Matilda Morrison, shows up on Charlie's doorstep to inform him he has inherited Uncle Jake's businesses, all of them. All he has to do is show up at Uncle Jake's funeral and she will take it from there. Charlie does show up and prevents one of the attendees from stabbing his uncle. As it happens, Uncle Jake had faked his death before and everyone wants to ensure he is really dead this time. Then Charlie's house blows up. Turns out Uncle Jake was a villain, a supervillain, with a lair on a Caribbean volcanic island. Also, Uncle Jake had developed intelligent cats and dolphins, all of whom work for Charlie now. Charlie's two cats, Hera and Persephone, have been monitoring him for years, reporting back to Uncle Jake. Between labor negotiations with the dolphins and trying to survive more assassination attempts, Charlie's life is very busy as a starter villain. Scalzi's writing is always entertaining with occasional laugh-out-loud moments. Recommended.

John Scalzi is usually an author I can expect to open his books, read them, laugh a bit through the story and in general have a good time. Most of his stand alone books have been an interesting and have some connection to a show of concept everyone is semi familiar with. Red Shirts was Star Trek, The Kaiju Preservation Society had ties to Godzilla and now Starter Villain is a play on James Bond and Inspector gadget. While it has a little bit of silliness, it is also a really good time if you ever wanted to see how they live on the bad guys side of life.

Charlie's life sucks. He lost his journalism job, then his marriage and came home to take care of his father before he lost him too. Isolated and alone, he just has his cat for company and a dream of buying the local bar/restaurant down the street now that his journalism career is basically over. One problem he can't afford it and he doesn't have any collateral to secure a loan for it. Charlie finds out about the death of his estranged billionaire Uncle and his life changes forever. For one, the uncle he barely knew has a request for him to stand for him at his funeral where Charlie finds out that while yes he might have made money on parking garages but that wasn't his true empire. Charlie's dead uncle was a supervillain and his team has come to help Charlie take over that empire.
"Your uncle is in parking garages because they fund his more important work,”Morrison said. “Which is to seek out, fund and create the sort of technologies and services that bring disruptive change to existing industrial and social paradigms, and offer them, on a confidential basis, to interested businesses and governments.”
“That’s a great mission statement,”I said. “But it doesn’t say what he actually did.”
HE WAS A VILLAIN, Hera typed.

This had a lot of great stuff in it. The computer savvy cats in management acting as spies, lair on a volcanic island, other supervillains and their attempts to oust Charlie from his new position etc. Charlie is in for a big awakening of his mind and all the things in the world he really didn't know existed. Charlie also has never had anyone really want him dead before so now just trying to stay alive while all of the other supervillains try to kill him is a new adventure in his life he never expected. It is definitely a journey and a funny one at that, I enjoyed my time in this bond-verse type story seen from the other side.
“How dead do you think Gratas wants me?” I asked her.
“You mean on a scale of one to ten, where one is ‘live and let live’ and ten is ‘murder you slow, bury your corpse in the woods, then dig you up to shit on your skull’? Maybe an eight.”

Overall if you are familiar with Scalzi's other stand alone novels I think you will find more of what you liked in those. If you have never tried a Scalzi novel, this really is a great jump in spot. Who isn't familiar at least a little with movies and tv shows like James Bond, Austin Powers and Inspector gadget? I will say if you are a cat person also then there is a bit more to love with the sentient strain of spy cats.

I thoroughly enjoyed this light-hearted story with its likeable MC, Charlie. At times, Starter Villain had me laughing out loud with its absurd humour and witty writing. All Charlie wanted to do was to buy his local pub. Instead, upon learning about his uncle's death, he is whisked away into a world of villainy complete with a volcanic lair, swear-y security dolphins who are threatening to strike, and hyper-intelligent spy cats. Will Charlie make it as the new Boss in this cut-throat business? Will the assassination attempts ever stop? Can he make a deal with the dolphins to avoid a strike?
For readers who root for the "bad guy," and like a good laugh, Starter Villain is a whole lot of fun!

John Scalzi imagines that there is a convocation of super villains hidden in our world since the Boer war. Charlie Fitzer, divorced ex-reporter living with cats, knows nothing of this until his uncle, Jake Baldwin, dies of cancer. Then his house blows up with an FBI agent inside, and his cats lead him to another house, where he learns his cats are intelligent, and his uncle was a super villain. After a test, he is told that he will inherit his uncle’s business as a Starter Villain (hard from TOR) but first he has to deal with the Convocation who demands billions, the talking dolphins who are on strike, and a hidden trove of Nazi treasures. Lots of fun and I had a grin the whole time I read it.

This was a fun read. The story was more complex than I inititally thought it would be, and the diaglogue was very funny. It is nice to find a light hearted book with some depth.

A big thanks to NetGalley and Tor for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I mean you can't exactly go wrong with a cover like that.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi is a science fiction novel, about a evil business solely run by cats. 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.

I honestly loved this book so much. It was a nice read to have between the thick fantasy novels I've been binging as of late. It was a perfect blend of laughs in villainy and hilarity. Honestly if you loved Scalzi's The Kaiju Preservation Society, you'll sure love this one.

Starter Villian, by John Scalzi, is a quick, humorous read. I wonder if he'd consider writing middle school novels. Other than the language, I can see secondary school students really enjoying this one. Just read to enjoy and don't overthink the absolute ridiculousness of certain parts.

Entertaining and fun, Starter Villain definitely felt like a quick and humorous read that helped me creep out of a reading slump!

A perfectly acceptable Scalzi book: some entertaining dialogue (very good zoom meeting; very good pitch meeting at Supervillain Shark Tank), an acceptably convoluted plot, profane cetaceans, and overall an enjoyable, undemanding way to spend an afternoon or two. Nothing groundbreaking, but a reliable installment of the Scalzi brand that neither astonishes nor disappoints.

This was the most fun I’ve had reading a book in a long time. Scalzi’s inventive story-telling is original and captivating. I could have sat reading this for days if it wasn’t so short.

I loved the humor, the twists and turns, and that it had a little bit of so many things; humor, science fiction, and mystery.

Have already hand sold this to multiple customers!

If you want a book you can’t put down because you keep laughing, this is the book for you. John Scalzi delivers a witty and devious novel with Starter Villain. An unemployed man living in his deceased fathers home with his two cats inherits the family business from his estranged multimillionaire uncle. The family business? Villainy. What could possibly go wrong?

Starter Villain is packed with action, humor, mystery, espionage, spycraft, and so much more.

Scalzi follows his fun Kaiju novel with another widely entertaining novel. Our protagonist is down on his luck and living in a house he doesn’t own. It seems that his luck has run out and he’s about to be homeless. That’s until he’s asked to stand as the only family member at his late uncles’ funeral. That good deed sends him down a wild path that he could’ve never imagined… becoming a criminal! Scalzi’s writting is witty and fun. Starter Villain comes highly recommended

Happiness is having a new John Scalzi to read and Starter Villain doesn't let one down. Charlie's life is pretty depressing until he is the heir to his Uncle's business. Since that business is being a super Villain, Charlie doesn't seem to be the perfect person to inherit but with the help of cats with keyboards and typing skills and his Uncle's assistant he manages to take it all on with Scalzi's usual humor and excellent writing.

Starter Villain is the perfect book to pick up if you're ever in the mood for a quick, fun read or you need something to get you out of a reading slump. The plot is fast-moving and fun, the characters are entertaining and likable, and cats own real estate. There were some parts which I read and thought to myself "okay, this plan hinges on this super variable and unpredictable factor going exactly right", but if you're a "go with the flow" type reader then that shouldn't bother you at all, and even though personally I am not able to not overthink and just enjoy the ride I still had a really fun time with this story. Charlie, the main character was likeable and a pretty standard "ordinary guy" and it was fun seeing him attempt to take everything in stride as he inherited his uncle's villainous empire. Starter Villain was a pretty entertaining "fish out of water" story and a great read for anyone looking for something they can knock out in a day and feel relatively satisfied.

I was absolutely stunned by how enjoyable The Kaiju Preservation Society was - it's in my top ten books I've read so far this year. So I went into Starter Villain hoping that it would match that energy.

It does. Absolutely.

I wanted another "man down on his luck during COVID is offered an unrealistically unlikely opportunity to change his life, which he takes, and rolls with all of the punches of sci fi shenanigans" book, and that's exactly what I got. This book is unexpected and hilarious, with entertaining characters, a wacky but just this edge of believable storyline, and a satisfying character arc and conclusion. 10/10, no notes.

As a marine biologist who is fully aware of the accurate reputations dolphins have, the cranky, potty-mouthed dolphin labour collective was particularly hilarious to me, and is a great example of why I've loved these types of books. It's just so off-beat and perfectly balances the line between being silly and taking itself seriously.

I will read anything that John Scalzi writes like this. Amazing.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor for providing me access to this e-book.

This is a fairly difficult book for me to review, because I absolutely hate that I didn’t love it. This was one of my most anticipated 2023 releases…why, you ask? Sentient. computer-savvy. cats. And that cover?! SIGN ME TF UP.

And the cat part of it? Fucking AWESOME. That was by far the selling point of this book for me, and it’s what kept me going when things got rocky. I absolutely ADORED Hera (and Persephone, but we don’t get much of her)!! I couldn’t get enough of Hera, she was purrfect :’) I lived for the scenes where she was typing on her little cat keyboard! I love that she looked out for Charlie. [spoilers removed] Every bit of those 2.5 stars are for Hera alone! If it weren’t for her, I’d have DNFed this book.

I didn’t need another cat. […] But then, no one ever needs a cat these days. 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.
…relatable *coughs*

“When people name cats, they usually do it in one of three categories: food, physical characteristics, or mythology.”
[…] “What about people who name their cats for characters in fantasy books?”
Lmaooo this book be callin’ me out! XD

However, other than the cats…I wasn’t a huge fan, sadly. The premise of the book is fantastic, but the delivery fell flat for me. There’s just something about Scalzi’s writing that grates on my nerves. (I DNFed The Kaiju Preservation Society, oops.) I think maybe I find it a bit…pretentious, I suppose? Also, his particular style of humor seems a bit ridiculous and forced to me at times, to the point of feeling childish. Actually, campy is how I would describe it, which is the same exact issue I had with KPS. Certain aspects toed the line of campy and annoying, hard. One of which being the angry, extremely potty-mouthed dolphins. I couldn’t decide whether or not I thought it was funny, or if it was too much.

In the beginning I thought I would relate a bit more to Charlie because we had an eerily similar situation: his dad divorced his wife, who he’d had 3 kids with, for a younger woman (Charlie’s mom). So Charlie was a good 15 years younger than his 3 half siblings, making him essentially an only child. He felt distanced from the siblings because they were much older, and they were close, leaving him kind of an outsider to their tight knit group. This is disturbingly similar to my situation, down to the fact that his siblings were two men and a woman. (I do have a couple other half siblings, but those 3 were the only ones I ever had any kind of relationship with.) So, it was a little creepy how similar it was…even down to the fact that the siblings got shitty and possessive over assets/money when the dad died (but we won’t get into that heh). But that’s about as far as my connection with Charlie went. He seemed like a good guy, but didn’t have much depth.

In the middle I ended up doing a lot of skimming because I was extremely bored. It’s very dialogue heavy, and when you find the dialogue a bit juvenile that makes things difficult. There was also a lot of waxing and waning about the villain society’s background and technicalities, which I found completely irrelevant in the long run. As short as this book was, I felt like a lot of the lengthy descriptions about how things worked could have been cut out without hindering reading comprehension. I did appreciate the suggestion that uber rich people were villainous, lol.

I guess I was just expecting more out of this book. While the sentient cats do have a fairly large part in this book, I still would have liked to see more of them. (Or maybe just other cat characters besides Hera and Persephone.) I expected more out of the villainy side of things, and found the actual “villains” to be lacking depth. Thankfully this book is very short and easy to get through. Even though this fell a bit flat for me, I think this will be a fun read for a lot of people.

Original review posted on Novel Heartbeat

It's stupid fun. And what's wrong with that, really? I think this will go over well with my meme-obsessed patrons.

Title: Starter Villain
Author: John Scalzi
Genre: Scifi
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

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, hyper-intelligent 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.

The snark and sarcasm in this made me laugh. And, of course, the cats. Because who doesn’t love super intelligent cats? This was a solid read, if you’re looking for pure entertainment in a not-believable premise. It was entertaining and creative and an easy, quick read. Pure fun, but not a lot of depth. And the dolphins were…underwhelming to me.

John Scalzi isa bestselling author. Starter Villian is his newest novel.

(Galley courtesy of Tor in exchange for an honest review.)

This book is one of my favorite reads of 2023.

It plays on a lot of the "bad guy" tropes, showing that there's even evil among villains. I loved the sentient upper-management cats, the dolphins who were not taking anyone's crap, and the sarcastic banter all around.

Charlie is a great relatable character and I appreciated that he just accepted that there were other people in the room smarter than him. Was he a badass when he needed to be? Yes. But he never tried to be something he wasn't capable of being. We all need a little more of Charlie's honesty.

This book is a drop everything and read this now situation.

Also, where can I get a Hera?

Starter Villain by John Scalzi is a fun comedy that explores the scenario of a nice guy who inherits a criminal empire. The story has a lot of fun with the concept and portrays the criminal empire as a James Bond villain's fantasy. The volcano lair is fun visually for the reader. Scalzi has so much fun writing dialogue for the sentient cats and dolphins. The pacing of the book is rapid speed for a pretty short book at 262 pages. The book is hard to put down. My biggest complaint is the story is too short, I wanted the world a little more fleshed out and wanted more on-the-job training. The comedy works very well and made me laugh out loud numerous times. The story is a little complex with many double and triple crossings, but it is explained well, and I was not lost. There is not a whole lot of action but when there is it is intense and really fun. The intro hooked me right away for this fish-out-of-water story. The ending was perfect for the story. This is my second John Scalzi novel the first was The Kaiju Preservation Society which made it into my top ten books read of the year list, which I see Starter Villain doing this year. I read Starter Villain early thanks to Netgalley and Tor Publishing Group in exchange for a review. Starter Villain was published on September 19, 2023.

Plot Summary: Charlie is down on his luck substitute teacher who dreams of owning a local Chicago bar, but he doesn't have any money. He has just been informed that his Uncle Jack who owns parking lots all over the world has passed away and wants Charlie to perform the services for him as a dying wish. Charlie met Uncle Jack once when he was 5 and he did send him a wedding gift that predicted exactly how long his wedding would last 3 and a half years. Charlie agrees to bury Uncle Jack and is paid a good fee from his estate. When the flowers with obscene cards asking, Jack to rot in hell, and f-off and die. Charlie grows concerned that Jack isn't who he thought he was. The guests all look like hardened criminals who don't even like Jack and just really want to prove that he's dead. Charlie finds out the funeral was a test and is going to inherit his Uncle's real business villainy across the world. Charlie finds out that his uncle has been keeping track of him through his cat who can communicate and has been set up by his uncle for his protection. Charlie must fend off evil organizations hell-bent on killing him and taking over his uncle's business.

What I Liked: The humor throughout the novel is great and never stale. I love Charlie's conversations with his cat Hera after he finds out he can talk. I love the bit about apologizing for the Meow Mix which Hera likes and thinks of as chips, and admits to ordering door dash when he's out. The James Bond Villainy is great and the fact that all the bad guys have cats. The sentient dolphins that strike was a clever and good plot point that led to the conclusion. I liked that I was hooked from the beginning, it is the same setup for The Kaiju Preservation Society but it worked better in this story. I loved how well-rounded the storytelling is. Everything gets resolved in the story. I loved how everybody was let down by how a volcano's death works.

What I Disliked: The novel is too short, I think this is my first ever complaint that a story is too short, but at times it feels rushed. I wanted to see more of Charlie's on-the-job training, and all facets of the empire.

Recommendations: Starter Villain is highly recommended. if you like John Scalzi's writing you will not be disappointed. The Kaiju Preservation Society was nerdier but this one was funnier. It has some great humor that fits in with Douglas Adams meets Monty Python's.

Rating: I rated Starter Villain by John Scalzi 5 out of 5 stars.