Spy Cats, Unionized Dolphins, and Idiot Billionaires

My sister has been telling me for a while to check out John Scalzi’s work for something humorous. I decided to search and stopped immediately upon seeing the cover of his book, Starter Villain. As you can see above, it has a cat dressed in a tuxedo on the cover. With cats being one of my favorite animals, I had to sneak a peek, especially to find out what was with the suit-wearing cat. While there were no cats wearing clothes in the book, it didn’t take away from the entertainment value while reading. 

The story starts innocuously enough. Charlie lives in a house with his two cats, Hera and Persephone. He has one goal: to buy a pub that is closing down. However, there is an interruption to his plan. Unbeknownst to Charlie, his distant uncle Jake leaves him his villain empire after his death, and now Charlie has a target on his back from every villain in the industry. Even though Charlie has some unusual help on his side, will he succeed in his uncle’s business, or will he die in the process?

The book does a good job of walking the line between absurdity and sadness given the situation that Charlie has found himself in. There are definitely scenes that I want to see acted out in live action, especially Jake’s funeral. The methods that the assassins and mercenaries try to go about verifying Jake’s death are so surreal. They try to act like their verification methods were natural (one person tried to stab the body), whereas Charlie, a normal person, found them all insane. There is a saying that people tend to show out at weddings and funerals because of the emotions behind them, and Jake’s funeral was definitely one of the best funerals I have ever read about. 

Charlie finding out that people hated his uncle enough to confirm his death was bizarre, but nothing could prepare him to find out that his uncle was in the business of cloning genetically engineered cats and dolphins. His own cats, Hera and Persephone, were spies for his uncle, who had been checking on him for years and saving his life in the background without Charlie knowing. Hera even had her own business, could type, and order her own food. 

As with anything having to do with villains, there are several sad components of this story. Hera, Persephone, and the dolphins were surprised by Charlie’s concern for them, because they had always been seen as tools. He was the first person to see them as beings and cared about their wants and needs. For example, Hera was surprised that Charlie felt bad about giving her kibble all this time, now that he knows that she likes people food, and the dolphins were surprised that Charlie listened to their union demands and found solutions to their problems. Charlie gave them agency, which was a drastic change from being constantly seen as experiments. As an animal lover, I found this profound yet sad at the same time, since Charlie was the only human who cared about them. 

But the cats and dolphins weren’t the only sad thing in the book. What is the first thought when you think of villain billionaires? Personally, I think of someone like Lex Luthor: someone who is cunning, smart, financially successful, and charismatic, but believes he is doing the right thing even though it harms more people in the process. That was something that Charlie had in mind. Imagine Charlie’s (and my) disappointment that the billionaire villains are idiots who inherited their business and fortune from their rich fathers. They lost more money than they made, which highlighted their lack of business acumen. 

Charlie found it mind-boggling that these giants were barely running the world. I want to say that I was surprised, but it is uncomfortably believable given real-world events that are happening in society. We have people with money and power running different countries with a lack of knowledge and care for their common man. 

Despite some of the sadness, I found this a very profound read, and it may be one of the best books I have read this year (we will see about the books I read for October, November, and December). If you like sentient animals and loads of chaos, this is a very funny read to lighten the spookiest month of the year. What are your favorite books about sentient animals? I would love to read more books about them, especially if they are cats.