Starter Villain
A down on his luck substitute teacher is helped by unionized dolphins and a terrifying henchperson to tackle the heap of troubles he inherits along with his uncle’s supervillain business.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
7mentions
7people
2023–2026years
57% recommend43% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Much of a fan as I am of his works, some of them certainly fall flat. Lock In is a great example; I loved his world building, but both of his first two books felt like it channeled Matlock or CSI with their endings, with exposition and some kind of reveal that felt out of character. I also admit lost interest in Old Man's War after The Last Colony.
Redshirts however is a master class in satire of Trek, and Starter Villain made me laugh.
I also admit Wil Wheaton's narration of his books always feels spot on to me.
- john scalzi: starter villain
note, if your wife doesn't like to be woken up, do not try to read this next to her in bed. you will LoL, and wake her up.
- This reminded me of "Starter Villain"! [1]. Don't want to give away the plot, but I'll say its a fun read.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Starter-Villain-John-Scalzi/dp/076538...
- I really like that he's not afraid to publish reasonably sized one-off novels. That is becoming so rare these days with so many other author wanting their first novel to be the first of a series of thousand page tomes absolutely chock full of wheel spinning and padding.
You can pick up something like Starter Villain and read it in an afternoon and thoroughly enjoy it. Other novels to check out include Androids Dream, Agent to the Stars, Redshirts, and Kaiju Preservation Society.
- Boy I have not seen Scalzi's bluesky but I gotta imagine there's a minion named Hugh getting a nasty splinter in a Starter Villain sequel
- The idea of a sabotage-whale armed with torpedoes reminds me of the book Starter Villain by John Scalzi. (It's... relatively zany.)
