The Kaiju Preservation Society: Shortlisted for the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novel

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Everyone has that favorite catchy song they like to put on, a guilty pleasure to turn to when life is getting you down and you need something to cheer you up and lighten the mood. This was a snappy, delightful book that ought to get a Hugo for this year but probably won't even get a nomination because -- whatever. My bad, so I’m awarding this one an extra star (I normally award only one star to any book I fail to finish). A story that hits all the beats and tropes you might think, and that's not a criticism: you read this book with the feelings you read a tropey romance, ie a knowing expectation of what will happen, plus gleeful anticipation for how you're going to get there. Second, this book has a B-Movie action plot attached to it, along with some melodrama and deaths that were pushed to the side with "Everyone was suuuper sad about it for a week :(((".

But it also means that restaurants are going to be pinched because they won’t be able to do table service.For the Kaiju, a nuclear explosion makes for the perfect nesting site, where large creatures can feed on Kaiju eggs, and the Kaiju parasites in turn feed on the creatures eventually giving nutrients back to the Kaiju, giving them the means to produce more eggs. Scalzi also has a great number of female MCs who are super-smart and kick butt, he has transgender characters, non-binary characters, characters of every single skin color, ethnic background and religion. Scalzi describes the book as a 'pop song,' and he's right—there are no cerebral messages about animal rights or nuclear proliferation. Any comparison to Jurassic Park applies only insofar as this is a story about humans living alongside huge, dangerous creatures. My tablet briefly flopped out of my hand, and I caught it before it skittered off the beanbag and onto the floor.

Throw in some nuclear powered Godzilla-type monsters and you are set for a romp through an alternate Earth. This is a tight, short tale that’s masterfully written to give you the scares, the chills and the laughs and all the feels. Yes, just roll with that) is light-hearted and very funny, full of present-day references and neverending quips and snark, almost a meme in book form. Then he connects with someone he knew in his previous life and that person offers him a job “in a remote location working with big animals. Also every character always had something snarky to say/reply with about everything, even in the more dramatic scenes.Just like in Jurassic Park, the KPS thinks they have everything under control, but we all know that control is overrated. Written with the brisk pace of a screenplay, it's as quippy as a Marvel movie and as awe-inspiring as Jurassic Park. Since all the insanity of 2020 hit (and 2021, and please god let 2022 be different), I've been wondering how it would affect artists and the art they make, and this is it right here. Due to the machinations of several traitorous instructors at Basgiath, Xaden and Violet are separated for most of the book—he’s stationed at a distant outpost, leaving her to handle the treacherous, cutthroat world of the war college on her own.

I think it should've taken more of focus on the characters and given each of them a distinct voice, because they all read similarly on the page.It was a top ten finalist for the 2023 Locus Awards, [6] and went on to win the 2023 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. There’s a lot to take in, and not much attempt on the author’s part to spread all those details out or present it with any kind of panache. Or maybe, that is just me unable to process concepts that do not support our human-centric thinking of the Universe and everything we do not understand, we tend to render impossible. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm, human-free world. A huge part of the pleasure here is the worldbuilding--the plot doesn't start until about 2/3 of the way through and that is absolutely fine because the worldbuilding is hugely entertaining.