So you suddenly find yourself in charge of an evil corporation…

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, 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.

An entertaining and unusual fish-out-of-water story about a man who inherits his uncle’s evil empire. Fast-paced, amusing, and starring some cats, I enjoyed this.

Starter Villain is a fun read. It taps into a whole host of action/adventure tropes (for example, those we’ve found in the Bond movies), and turns many them on their head. What do you do when you inherit an evil empire, rather than build it yourself? Why do villains become villains? Also, how do they villain? Why do some supervillains have goals and plans that seem, ultimately, to be self-defeating? All of these and more are addressed in Scalzi’s novel, as Charlie blunders his way through his epically changed reality, and also his villain orientation.

The book’s a little off-the-wall, with hints of Douglas Adams-esque invention and tone. It was fun to follow Charlie navigate his newfound influence and power, despite being ideologically opposed to pretty much everything around him. His attempts to reinvent the wheel, to shift the focus of the organization are met with plenty of opposition — some realistic, some violent. The novel includes a fair amount of action, international intrigue, and plenty of on-point commentary on certain sectors of society (tech-bros, for example, and also the super-wealthy elite).

If you’re looking for an amusing diversion in these trouble times, then I think Starter Villain could be exactly what you’re looking for. Recommended.

Also, the cats are great.

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John Scalzi’s Starter Villain is due to be published by Tor Books in North America (September 19th) and in the UK (September 21st).

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Review copy received via NetGalley