Review: "The Kaiju Preservation Society" by John Sclazi

 REVIEW
"The Kaiju Preservation Society" by John Scalzi

I do not, as a general rule, write reviews for books or movies unless they are singularly terrible or excellent. For this book, the former applies. 

I read the Old Man's War series of novels by John Sclazi and enjoyed them to some degree. Sclazi has a certain kind of writing style, both witty and brief. He told a good story in Old Man's War with an original concept and decent plots. Sclazi tries again in The Kaiju Preservation Society, and he does not stick the landing.

Yes, the concept he comes up with in the book is interesting and original. It is a great concept, which I really wanted to see explored and expanded. Detailed images of Godzilla and the Pacific Rim Kaiju were thundering around in my head as I broke open the first digital page. 

Interesting concept. 

Terrible execution. 

Moment of honesty here, I did not finish it.

The characters were cookie cutter copies of each other. They may have different appearances, but their manner of speech was identical. Everyone was snarky and unlikeable. No one had a unique voice. Sure, some of the dialogue was humorous, but it was too much and too constant. It was like Thor: Love and Thunder. Too much comedy to take any of it seriously. 

Descriptions? Huge. Big. Massive. That is about it. I have no mental picture whatsoever of what the author was attempting to convey, if he was attempting at all. The world was just a jungle, green and very jungle like. I know there is such a thing as over-description, but some more details would have been nice. 

Politics, they are in there. If you are conservative, don't even bother. I read novels like this to escape the real world and politics. The author saw fit to ruin that for me and probably half the other readers out there. Improper use of pronouns was a key factor in my dropping this one, i.e., using pronouns which normally denote a group in referring to an individual. Of course, he had to pepper in anti-Trump sentiment with poor references to Trump's children. Then there was a heavy dose of "all corporate men are evil" with a basic greedy businessman bad guy. There was a requisite gay couple included for good measure. I have read many books with gay couples (The Expanse series is peppered with them) and it was not an issue. Based on the rest of this book it is clear that it was just for the woke audience.

 

I feel like the whole book was just a virtue signaling cash grab. 

I am glad I did not pay money for this drivel. Yeah, drivel. Crap. Garbage. Still, the writing was nowhere near as bad as what the people at Disney are putting out these days. Have you seen Kenobi or She Hulk? 

Do yourself a favor and stay away from The Kaiju Preservation Society and Disney.