I don’t know what I was expecting from this book, but it wasn’t what I got. What I got was an amazing, light-hearted and fun read that was like reading a bubblegum pop song. I loved every second of it. Even during the tense moments of this book, it stayed hilarious and the tone has me absolutely obsessed with this book. I can’t wait to clear some more of my TBR so I have an excuse to buy more of Scalzi’s work after reading this one.
Thanks to Tor for the ARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.
About the book:
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 at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and 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 that’s found its way to the alternate world. Others have, too–and their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.
What did I think?
For me, the characters were the highlight of this book. Jamie was both funny and relatable, and I loved following him as he discovered the complexities of Kaiju-Earth. As he worked, he met a lot of KPS’s Gold Team members and I loved the way that they grew into truly authentic feeling friendships over the length of their mission. It was a believable group of coworkers spending all their time together; with the friendships, conflicts and teasing I’d expect from that dynamic. I particularly loved Satie. He’s a badass, and I respect him in every way. Most of the people who had done more than one ‘tour’ on Kaiju Earth were absolutely badass.
I was genuinely impressed with the world-building in this book. I don’t generally set very high expectations for a light-hearted sci-fi in terms of logic and world-building, but this was surprisingly sound. This book balanced realistic explanations and science with classic hand-wavey sci-fi bullshit (and I mean that as a compliment) in a way that I could understand everything it was explaining and find it convincing enough to suspend my disbelief. And when we’re talking about mountain-sized nuclear monsters, that’s very impressive. I loved the way that scientific differences between our Earth and Kaiju Earth had a reaching impact, for example in them using airships. It made Kaiju Earth feel very different from our world.
I raced through this book, completely immersed from the first page. It felt very cinematic, and I would love to see a movie of this book. The ending was super uplifting, and it left me thinking about the future of the characters and the world in a really positive way.
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Release Date: 17th March 2022
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inkandplasma reviews 