Hello hello, and welcome or welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet. Today is my stop on the blog tour for Starter Villain. Big thanks to Tor Books and Black Crow PR.
Synopsis
Inheriting your uncle’s supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who’s running the place.
Charlie’s life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.
Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.
But becoming a supervillain isn’t all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they’re coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.
It’s up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyperintelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.
In a dog-eat-dog world…be a cat.
Review
Let me start by saying that sentient animals seem like a great idea after this book. My favourite scene in the entire book was possibly when Charlie first meets the dolphins, who are threatening to strike. The insults they fling at him had me genuinely chuckling aloud, and his bemused reaction was almost as comic.
Charlie is a character you find yourself rooting for from the start. Down on his luck, alone in the world, and watching the news with his (seemingly perfectly normal) cat, you can’t help but feel for him. Life has really kicked him to the curb, and he needs a break. The fact that comes in the form of supervillainary is a surprise, but he’s not really in a position to turn it down.
With real wit and humour, we follow Charlie’s introduction into a world he had no clue existed, let alone that he was related to. From choosing how to let a spy fake his death to trying to stop a supervillain war, the decisions he needs to make get big very quickly. Luckily he has the support of his henchperson and his sentient cats, who might type important messages during the day, but still curl up to sleep with him at night.
A book with many messages to send – some via talking animals – and many thoughts to provoke, you will finish up wondering how much exactly you don’t know about what goes on in the world…. and exactly what your cat thinks of you.
Thanks for stopping by for this review today. Starter Villain is out now.
And On She Reads 