Book Review: Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

I'll say right off the bat that this was a pretty underwhelming book. When you have a name like Kaiju Preservation Society, I'd expect there to be lots of giant monsters fighting stomping around; instead, in this book, there is mostly one kaiju who mostly doesn't move. You'd also expect detailed descriptions of each monster - or, at the least, something like "she looked like a giant triceratops"; we meet four kaiju in total in this book, and I have no idea what any of them looked like. There are "micro" descriptions (this one has wings, this one has a giant eyeball), but no macro descriptions of what they looked like in total. Add it together with a surprisingly formulaic storyline and dialogue that made you want to slap the main characters right across the chops for being too cutesy, and you've got a recipe for a meh masterpiece by the author of the great Redshirts.

But look, this book is a minor work. Even John Scalzi agrees - in the afterword he writes that this is the book he wrote when he was unable to concentrate on the epic he was planning. As a published product of the pandemic, it's also notable that the action takes place during the pandemic - it's interesting to see characters have to deal with things like wearing masks, living through shutdowns, and keeping to their bubbles (of course there's also magic vaccines so the action can move forward).

As a bit of a lark, I feel like I can bump this up a little bit - let's give this six out of ten hot dogs.