"The Kaiju Preservation Society" by John Scalzi

Jamie Gray gets fired and, out of desperation, gets recruited to “an animal rights organisation.”  This turns out to be the Kaiju Preservation Society (KPS), working with massive, dinosaur-like creatures on an alternate Earth in a parallel dimension, where everything wants to eat everything else.

This is an enjoyable, lightweight, fish-out-of-water tale, with likeable characters, an engaging plot, and massive monsters.  In the Author’s Note at the back of the book, John Scalzi says:

“KPS is not, and I say this with absolutely no slight intended, 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 that’s exactly what it is.  And it does it very well.

This is quite a short book, but there’s a lot of world building to do in order to set up everything you need before the jeopardy kicks in.  This world building is achieved through the experience of our main character and three other new recruits - so the explanations of the alternate Earth, the kaiju, and the KPS itself, come naturally out of the characters having to learn or be taught.

The need for this amount of world building in a short book means that things only start to get ‘interesting’ (a.k.a. actual jeopardy) about 70% of the way through the book.  Up to that point, while I was enjoying the characters and finding out about the alternate Earth, I was wondering what was going to actually happen.  I was also wondering what a gang of 4 newcomers could do in the face of jeopardy involving massive monsters that could wreak havoc on a global scale.  But the book really starts to deliver at this 70% point, with a pay-off for all the world building, and a scope of ‘peril’ that fits perfectly with the characters.

The characters are all likeable, albeit quite similar to each other: they’re all bright, quick-witted, and slightly sarcastic, and the dialogue between consists largely of banter.  They’re people I’d probably enjoy hanging out with.  This made the story accessible and an easy read, but with very little depth of character, and no real emotional inner life for any of them.  But for a plot-driven book of this length, that was fine.

Perfect length chapters, too.  Is that a strange thing to include in a review?  It has such an impact on my progress through a book… that “just one more chapter” feeling when the clock is ticking towards 1:00am.

Anyway… very enjoyable.

My rating: ★★★★☆