John Scalzi is one of my favorite authors. He explores intriguing ideas with a sharp, satirical sense of comedy that occasionally veers into the goofy. His heroes tend to be Everyman not Superman, muddling through a crisis that they often don’t fully understand, thinking their way to a solution rather than punching or shooting their way. Plus, he writes in stripped down style that is just fun (and quick) to read.
Starter Villian fits right into that mold. In this book, Scalzi takes a look at the whole super villain trope – the James Bond sort, not the MCU sort. Scalzi tackles two questions: first how does an Ernst Blofeld (who is specifically mentioned as a role model by the villains in the story) actually operate in the world? How does an evil empire function? How easy is it, for example, to actually access all those riches and use them to satisfy dastardly whims and desires? Second, what would you do if you suddenly found yourself running a villainous empire of villainy?
Our protagonist Charlie is suddenly faced with the second question. Charlie, a former journalism now scraping by as a substitute math teacher, discovers that his long, lost uncle is, or rather was, the richest, most powerful villain in the world when the uncle suddenly dies, leaving his entire empire to his unsuspecting nephew. Charlie, still grappling with the whole idea of super villains, finds himself running a global business complete with a secret liar in an active volcano, a navy of intelligence enhanced dolphins, legions of feline spies, and, of course, an attractive assistant. (At least, Scalzi suggests she’s attractive. One of Scalzi’s weaknesses as an author is his almost total lack of description other than what is absolutely essential to the plot, so I’m guessing she is attractive based on very scant clues.) Opposing Charlie? A cabal of other super villains, none of whom liked his uncle, and none of whom particularly like him. In fact, they all want him and his empire out of the way so they can go about the business of conquering the world. Charlie is, quite frankly, in way over his head. His only advantages, other than owning an empire that builds massive space lasers and other weapons, is his experience as a business reporter, because, it turns out, running an evil empire is pretty much like running any corporate empire – and Charlie knows how to go about researching his opponents’ weaknesses.
It is all great fun, with just enough of a bite in the satire to give the reader some nuggets of thought before the next machinations get underway.
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