I’ve often said that writing humour (sorry, American readers: ‘humor’) is HARD. The difficulty is, as I understand it, that writing humour means that it doesn’t come across in the same way as a spoken one-liner.
Perhaps more problematical is that a person’s sense of humour is not the same as another’s. What can seem hilarious to one person may leave another stone-cold. This also changes, depending upon age, possibly gender and life-experience – what I found funny at the age of 15 may not be quite so funny today, nearly 50 years on. (Or it might be.)
It is a reason why I approach most books involving HUMOUR with caution. Is there anybody else who, seeing words like “Hilariously funny!”, will quickly put the book down and move onto something else, no doubt less hilarious?
There are few ‘funny’ books that work for me, I’ve realised. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld often works. Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy worked for me, about 45 years ago.
Which brings me to this one by John Scalzi. I’ll be honest and say that this one has been staring at me from the TBR for a while now. Not because John is (IMO) a bad writer, but because it’s meant to be ‘humorous’. So whilst I loved The Shattering Peace, reviewed last year, this one has been sat for a while in the pile. Even John’s erm… humorous… books have been a little variable for me: I loved When The Moon Hits Your Eye (review here) but Redshirts less so (review here) – even though it was nominated for a Hugo by fans who clearly showed that Star Trek fans can have a sense of humour. (See – I’m doing it on purpose now…)
So anyway, after two positives (Shattering Peace and Moon Hits Your Eye) and an OK recently on Scalzi’s books, (Kaiju Preservation Society was OK for me), I thought that I would (at last!) try this one.
The story’s a pretty straightforward one – Charlie, an intermittently employed supply teacher and recent divorcee, finds himself receiving a gift from a distant uncle – the keys to his multi-million and highly secret business.
The snag to this is that Uncle Jake, and therefore the business, may not have been doing things entirely legally. Smuggled to the business’s headquarters on a volcanic island, Charlie finds himself having to become the CEO very quickly in order to avoid the company’s rivals taking over. In other words, he will have to become a villain.
Warning: involves cats who can type and sweary strike-threatening dolphins.
So, what is it that makes this work? Well, for me in this type of book the humour has to be silly, but not too silly. Things should be credible and have an internal logic, that makes sense in the setting of the story. So, cats that can type may be odd, but can be explained in a timey-wimey way through genetic manipulation. (Experimenting on cats to do this does seem like an evil thing to do, doesn’t it?)
The fact that the book is only 270-ish pages long means that Scalzi doesn’t over-egg the pudding. The plot stays as long as it needs to do to make its point and then leaves, before it over-extends itself. (I did feel that Redshirts was a good idea that stayed too long.)
It also helps if you can go along with the joke; in this case, have a general idea of ‘villains’, whether that be from the Bond books, and movies themselves, the Minions films or even the Austin Powers movies, themselves a parody of the Bond films. This makes the characters very relatable within the world they live in. With a secret lair near a volcano, cats who have been genetically modified to type, sweary dolphins who have been intelligently enhanced (and now are on strike), lasers, missiles, and satellites, not to mention all the other baddies who want to kill him, Charlie is on a steep learning curve.
There’s also the fact that this is VERY similar to Episode 2 of Season 8 from The Simpsons (You Only Move Twice)….
But that is all part of the fun. What Scalzi also brings to the table is a great deal of snappy banter:
““So we’re like Spotify, but for evil.” “We’re much less evil than Spotify. We actually pay a living wage to the people whose work we’re selling.””
…and a general feeling that he’s having a lot of fun with this whilst writing. The humour works for me.
The ending ties things up a little too quickly perhaps, but generally I loved the ride as far as it goes. This even goes down to the US cover, which I love so much more than the bland generic ‘paint by numbers’ UK edition. I should not have left this one on the shelf as long as I did. Great fun.
© 2026 Mark Yon
Hardback | TOR Books
STARTER VILLAIN by John Scalzi
September 2023 | 272 pages
ISBN: 978-152 9082 951
