I haven’t done this a lot, not sure how much I will in the future, but recently, I decided to get through the huge backlog of books that I’ve had sitting around. Mostly, that’s been done by cutting the majority of social media out of my life because it’s just crap, so I went back to reading for a couple of hours a day instead of staring at a screen. Best decision I’ve made recently. So I’ve made it through a bunch of books in the last couple of weeks, but this time, I wanted to talk about Starter Villain, a 2023 novel by John Scalzi. Was it any  good? Let’s find out.

Generally, I like Scalzi, except when he gets political. There have been a couple of  books that I’ve had to put down because he can’t focus on the story. One thing I will say is that he’s really fallen off, quality-wise, since his Old Man’s War days. That is very much the case here.

The story, in very short form, follows. Charlie Fitzer is a former journalist turned substitute teacher who dreams of being able to buy a bar that he and his father went to and he has good memories of. However, he has no money and the bank refuses to give him a loan. His ultra-rich uncle dies and suddenly, he’s thrust into a world of villainy filled with talking cats, a union dispute with dolphins, and an evil worldwide organization that wants his money and/or his life. Can he figure out how to survive and maintain his legacy? Or does he want to?

It’s an interesting premise that is painfully telegraphed within the first page or two of the book. He finds out that his uncle is dead on television and then, through long passages of exposition, it becomes obvious that he’s going to be the heir apparent and it all devolves from there.

The problem is, nothing really happens. Yes, he’s under near constant attack, or threat of attack, from the evil Convocation, which isn’t so much evil as it is completely incompetent. The only motivations that any of the “evil” characters have is mustache-twirling nonsense and extreme greed and, of course, the aforementioned incompetence because none of them have any responsibility whatsoever. How they got as far as they have is unknown. Most of them were just born into it and are wasting their fortunes. I don’t think anyone does anything expressly “evil” in the book, except to each other.

Charlie, at least on the surface, is a nice enough guy, although he does things that he has no pre-defined knowledge of. He comes off like a stereotypical Gary Stu. Most other characters are just idiots with egos they have not earned. As I said, there is no actual villainy from other sides, except where the “bad guys” backstab each other, but for an organization of super-villains, they don’t seem to be doing anything worthy of the title.

Scalzi started his career writing some good science fiction and has now devolved into popcorn tripe. His book before this, Kaiju Preservation Society, had the same problem. Bland characters doing unimpressive stuff, draped over an environmental message and it didn’t grab me at all.

He’s going back for another swing at Old Man’s War later this year, maybe that will be better. There is one more book that he’s released recently that I haven’t gotten to yet, but I’m not holding out a lot of hope, at least based on recent performance. I’ve heard someone describe this as “Big Bang Theory in book form” and that’s pretty accurate. I don’t like Big Bang Theory and I don’t really like this. If he doesn’t improve dramatically, he might get pulled from my list of “must read” authors. This just isn’t doing it for me.