The novel “Starter Villain” by John Scalzi was published for the first time in 2023. It won the Alex Award as one of the novels of the year written for adults that have special appeal to young adults ages 12 through 18.
Charlie Fitzer has gone through several personal and professional hardships with the result that he lives with his cats with the meager salary of a substitute teacher in the house of which his father left him the right to live. He’d like to turn his life around by taking over a pub whose owner intends to retire but his hopes of obtaining a loan from the bank seem slim to none.
While he’s mulling over his options, Charlie is informed of the death of his uncle Jake, with whom he hadn’t had contact for many years following a huge fight with his father. Jake’s assistant Mathilda Morrison asks him to speak at his uncle’s funeral in exchange for an inheritance. At the funeral, Charlie finds strange people who only want to make sure that Jake is really dead. Things get even stranger when Charlie’s house is blown up and Morrison tells him to follow his cat Hera.
It’s not the first time that John Scalzi has built a story taking inspiration from works of various types, which can be from literature, television, or cinema. In the case of “Starter Villain” there’s a literary / cinematographic mix with various inspirations from James Bond’s adventures that include explicit mentions. The subtitle included in the British edition “A turbo-charged tale of supervillains, minions and a hidden volcano lair…” suggests the novel’s tone.
Charlie’s story is that of an ordinary man with ordinary problems who finds himself in a decidedly out-of-the-ordinary situation when he discovers that his uncle Jake was a supervillain and that’s just the beginning. The discovery that his cats are a product of genetic engineering and the invitation to join a group of supervillains contribute to turning Charlie’s life upside down.
John Scalzi seems to have a lot of fun twisting certain clichés that are seen in James Bond stories, starting with the description of the supervillains. The typical diabolical minds in those stories are absent because in “Starter Villain” the typical supervillain is an idiot who inherited a criminal empire.
Humor is an important component of the novel. Sometimes, I had some doubts about John Scalzi’s use of humor but in my opinion, in “Starter Villain” it’s used very well. For example, dolphins are really foul-mouthed and threaten to go on strike after forming a union.
The lighthearted narrative is also used to include some serious topics. That’s accompanied by witty lines such as the one in which Morrison describes a convention of supervillains: “Think of Davos, except they don’t pretend they’re helping people.”
The satirical element, which includes the services offered by Uncle Jake to various governments through a subscription model, is also linked to typical clichés of James Bond stories but also a certain type of conspiracy theories. The supervillains don’t intend to rule the world but in their own way, they’re even more ambitious in the way they give what are called nudges using sometimes science fiction means.
Between the serious and the facetious, the plot is developed with continuous twists that often overturn situations that seem to follow some cliché. Poor Charlie tries to understand how the life of a supervillain works but must also avoid being eliminated by potential rivals who consider him inept and therefore an easy target.
Overall, I thought that John Scalzi mixed the various elements of “Starter Villain” very well, obtaining a very funny novel that also offers some food for thought. You don’t have to be an expert in James Bond stories to appreciate it, so I recommend it to anyone who wants to be carried away by a story that is often over the top in a clever way. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
