Starter Villain

This was a pleasant surprise, I think I was expecting something a little more self-serious but what I got instead was nicely digestible satire.

The plot is simple: Enter Charlie, a laid-off journalist turned substitute teacher whose life has gone off the rails. His wife left him, his dad died and so has his estranged billionaire uncle Jake. Reduced to squatting in his father's home while the estate settles Charlie receives quite the windfall when his uncle's last request winds up making him the inheritor of his uncle's enterprise. His uncle the parking lot mogul turns out to have had a much more diverse portfolio than expected; not mentioned in his obituary are the volcano lair, talking dolphins, and spy cats.

Yeah, this is a pretty silly premise but it sets up a nice fish-out-of-water commentary on post-covid society. Personally, I prefer my satire a little more subtle and biting but this is fine, turns out that the “villains” of this story are billionaire nepo-babies with a Blofeld affectation (who would have guessed). This whole story is really just a setup for a series of punch lines, the largest one being a villain convention attended by aspirant tech-bros and finance-douche-alphas.

I think if I were a cat person I'd have loved this, but I'm not. There are some really funny bits either way; I absolutely loved my comrade dolphins (Fuck Northwestern!), and the idea that every villain's master plan amounted to starting a subscription service definitely earned itself a spit-take.

EDIT: I completely forgot to mention that the audiobook is a Wil Wheaton narration! It's an excellent choice of narrator for such a funny story, and you can tell audibly just how much fun he is having with the material. I listened to the first half of this book and I think he does an excellent job. I definitely recommend the audiobook for this one.

TL;DR: A light and funny read, nothing too serious. Talking animals, space lasers, general bond-villain silliness.