Reviews with content warning for Animal death - The Kaiju Preservation Society

Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

32 reviews

deedireads's review against another edition

adventurous funny hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

All my reviews live at https://deedispeaking.com/reads/.

TL;DR REVIEW:

The Kaiju Preservation Society was a complete and utter delight. The perfect snack of a sci-fi novel, fun and funny and engaging.

For you if: You love a good sci-fi set-up beginning with a plotty ending.

FULL REVIEW:

I have never read John Scalzi before, but with this book nominated for the Hugo Award, it was finally time. What a fun party I’ve been missing out on!

I don’t think I could put it better than John himself did in his author’s note:

“[This book is not] a brooding symphony of a novel. It’s a pop song. It’s meant to be light and catchy, with three minutes of hooks and choruses for you to sing along with, and then you’re done and you go on with your day, hopefully with a smile on your face.”

And truly, that’s exactly what’s going on here. As the pandemic hits, a man named Jamie goes from employed at a start-up to delivering food to pay the bills, which lands him the gig of a lifetime: a job where he spends six months of the year as “off the grid” as you could LITERALLY get in a sci-fi novel, working for the Kaiju Preservation Soceity. (If you, like me, did not know what a Kaiju was, it’s essentially like a movie monster a la Godzilla or Jurrasic Park). And that’s all I’ll say, because the discovery is more than half the fun.

This is definitively sci-fi, with lots of sciency worldbuilding, but what a fun and engaging time of it. The banter between characters is full of levity and jokes. The tone of the prose is wink-winky. The plot is just enough until all of a sudden it takes over and you rush to a fast-paced ending. And throughout, there’s just enough heart here to squeeze ya.

If you’re looking for something quick and fun, this is ABSOLUTELY it. Now, on to Scalzi’s backlist!

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readerette's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

What an absolute delight. The characters are engaging and hilarious, the world is quirky and cool, and I looked forward to diving back in after each time I had to put it down to do inconvenient things like sleep or work.

This alternate-Earth story starts with a decent amount of world-building and character development, and then an emotional twist emerges (that you'll probably see coming if you've read many mysteries/sci fi). The resolution is sweet and keeps the humor alive. I also appreciate the length. Not every story needs to be a tome, and this one was just right. And the villain is very hateable (but not so much that my taste for the story soured, and their arc went the way it should have).

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trips's review against another edition

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adventurous funny tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

This book was fun, and like Scalzi says himself, like a pop song. Its not super deep, but it is fun and found myself nodding along with the plot.

It honestly reminded me of the summer action movie that gets pushed every year. Its not deep, things kind of happen for conveniences sake but it kept me entertained for a few hours and that's all I think Scalzi really wanted out of this too. A fun story for the sake of being entertaining.

The concepts were cool and the humor was great.

Anyone annoyed that the book is "too woke" is hilarious though, that also gave me a good laugh reading the comments.

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wickedgrumpy's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging funny informative lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.25

The topical real world pandemic/politics mentioned felt like a time capsule reminder of an era that was terrifying and sucked. In that regard, I felt it did a bit of disservice to the rest of the book because I genuinely loved the premise/worldbuilding of Kaiju Earth (I have a pet peeve of it being "kaiju" instead of the more proper kaijū).

The humor was full of nods to pop/nerd culture and some repetitive gags which was generally tied to the burgeoning found family vibes from the crew. I would say that some of the characters felt a little one dimensional, which can kind of be explained away with the job attracting a certain type of person, but it felt a little lazy. I did appreciate the non-binary rep for one character though.

The majority of the book had you learning everything via the protagonist trial-by-fire style which lent itself well to exploring a new world. If there was more expansion about the multiverse situation I would probably gobble it up, but I think I'm a little scarred about current(-ish) events/politics in books at the moment.

At the end of the day, it was a predictable story, but I'm pretty sure that was the point.

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athryn's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This was great, I devoured it in one day, almost in one sitting! To be fair, I was camping, so there wasn't much to distract me, but this was a great light read.

Scalzi is definitely back to form after the somewhat disappointing Interdependency series. This had some great fantasy/wish fulfillment going on. I could kind of see this getting turned into a film or a TV series.

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lex_y's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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singalana's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

My first thought after reading this book was that it was ok, but I expected more. It’s an adventurous sci-fi story about a man who gets fired from his job and ends up delivering takeout during the COVID-pandemic. Then he gets a job offer from a mysterious organization, and events unfold from there. The story is light both on science and in general. There’s a lot of banter, and the book leans more on dialogue than on description. The author explains in the Author’s note that basically he needed to write something light and fun.

And it is light and partly fun. But when I reached the middle of the book, I was wanting something MORE. Basically, three things bothered me in this book. Firstly, it was too light on description. Give me something to work with, man! I don’t need pages and pages of description, just a few lines will do just fine. Secondly (and this relates to the first point), the characters were really difficult to distinguish from one another. I just finished the books, and I don’t remember any of the names, let alone whether they were men, women or something else. And lastly (relating to the second point) the characters didn’t have different enough voices. Yes, they had signature phrases, but they all spoke in banter and witticisms. I find it hard to believe that every character in this book has a PhD in banter.

In conclusion: it’s not that deep, bro. It was fun, and it was light. In the author’s own words: It’s a pop song.

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