John Scalzi is one of the more popular, prolific, accessible, and intelligent Science Fiction writers plying his trade these days. I’m a big fan of his Old Man’s War series, as well as the other many, many books he’s written. When I learned he was tackling one of my favorite SF mainstays, the Kaiju, I was very excited. Scalzi’s style, which often has well-timed humor injected, seems a perfect fit for a story about Kaiju.
When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization.” Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.
What Tom doesn’t tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm, human-free world. They’re the universe’s largest and most dangerous panda and they’re in trouble.
It’s not just the Kaiju Preservation Society who have found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.
Jamie Gray, a recently out of work young man at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, is presented with a life-changing opportunity during a chance encounter with an old college friend. Jamie just needs to be able to lift things, but his friend tells Jamie that his passion for Science Fiction will be quite helpful with this new job.
What Jamie learns is that he is part of a team of people who spend months at a time on a parallel Earth where Kaiju have evolved and humans are not native. That team is of course, the Kaiju Preservation Society. Much of his duties involves lifting things, which he notes repeatedly, but he gets to see Kaiju and the KPS essentially treats these humongous creatures like farm animals. Well, animals is a stretch, because they are described more like an ecosystem than a singular living entity in the same respect a human, dog, or even a plant is. There’s an engaging, and interesting backstory to the KPS that eventually comes to affect the present, Jamie and his friends specifically. It takes a while for the real dramatic tension and conflict to rear their head, but it is a fun and familiar box of set pieces Scalzi throws to readers as the novel hits its crescendo.
There’s some “science” in the novel, particularly around the Kaiju themselves and the method by which humans from “our” earth travel to “Kaiju Earth” that gives the novel some needed weight. After all, this is a novel about giant monsters like Godzilla, King Kong, and Gamera being real, so some grounding helps to balance out that larger than life element of the novel. On the other hand, John Scalzi all but admits he’s going for pure entertainment with this novel and he most definitely hits the target. I’m a Metallica fan, some of their more melodic and powerful songs are delightful, songs like “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” and “Fade to Black,” but sometimes, you just want to blast “Enter Sandman,” turn it up to eleven, shout out the lyrics because you and everybody you are with knows the lyrics, and enjoy the ride. Both kinds of things from the same artist are worthy, enjoyable on their own merits, and if anything, shows the range (within a specific genre, if you will), of said artist.
The Kaiju Preservation Society is a blast, a zippy read with a great concept, fun characters and a novel that ends with a note which reminds me of the closing shot of Iron Man that leaves the reader (at least this reader) hoping for more giant monster stories. In the best way possible, the novel delivers exactly on what you might expect from John Scalzi writing about Kaiju might deliver.
Recommended
© 2022 Rob H. Bedford
Published by Tor Books | March 2022 | 272 Pages
Excerpt https://www.torforgeblog.com/2021/12/20/excerpt-the-kaiju-preservation-society-by-john-scalzi/
https://whatever.scalzi.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
