The Kaiju Preservation Society

I really enjoyed this book. It blends humour and wit with plenty of action, believable world building and likeable characters. I really hope there will be a sequel.

I enjoyed all of John's work, but this -- this is a wonderful story full of shocking revelations, good guys, astonishingly bad guys, great monsters, an amazing plot. . . can you tell I liked it yet? I'm having a stressful time in my life right now, wars and rumors of wars, personal difficulties to work thru, and this was the perfect distraction for the week. Thanks, John! Everyone, buy this book now, you will forget all of your troubles for a while... Which feels so good!

This is a light, amusing tale that makes creative use of familiar concepts, as telegraphed in the title. The protagonist is a young grad school dropout, and most of the other characters are scientists. There is no sex -- it might be a Young Adult novel. There is lots of Scalzi's trademark wit and humor as well as a trans character. INFLUENCES 1) Of course Godzilla is the obvious influence, along with the other kaiju films that followed. Scalzi takes the original link between Godzilla and atomic/nuclear weapons and gives it a twist. Which kaiju are in "The KPS"? Frustratingly, we are given only the barest descriptions, so we don't know. Some fly. Some have eyes, or just eye-spots. More detailed description would have been much appreciated. 2) The kaiju live in a mysterious land which is a direct descendant of Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Lost World," along with, of course, the more recent "Jurassic Park." This one is updated using the Many-Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. 3) The third influence is one which I doubt that many recent science fiction fans know about. Brian Aldiss was the first, in 1958, to introduce the idea that very large beasts might have very large parasites, in "Poor Little Warrior!" (Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction). This idea has been picked up and used in several kaiju films, and plays a key role in "The KPS." The author says he had fun writing this, and I had fun reading it.

This book doesn't have any deep meaning to it. It doesn't have any world changing lesson that it's trying to get across. It's just plain fun. It's a summer tent pole movie in book form. This is all it wants to be and it's bloody wonderful at it. The book supposes an alternate world where kaiju exist and are, in fact, the source of our own kaiju myths. We see this world through the eyes of a KPS "new guy" on his first rotation into Kaiju Earth. What I like about him is that he's not the "brilliant scientist who only he can save the world" or any kind of visionary or anything else. The main character (and narrator) is just a regular guy to takes a job, described as "lifting things" and "working with large animals" when he needs a job that isn't some crappy gig-economy delivery job. He's an intelligent everyman. We get to see this new world through his eyes and it's a pretty wonderful trip. The book has snappy, amusing dialog (pretty much a Scalzi trademark anymore), interesting characters, just the right amount of descriptive prose to let you see the scene in your head without becoming tedious, and the right amount of science for the tale. By that last I mean that he gives science explanations for much of the wildness of the story but doesn't bog you down in details. I have no clue if the science is perfect or not, but it's done in such a way that you really don't care because it all holds together in service of the story. It sounds plausible, so you stay in suspension of disbelief and are happy to run with it. Overall, an excellent book.

Ever read something that you just *needed*, and didn't even realize that it was something you needed until you read it? That's KPS for me. It's funny, yes (it's Scalzi), it's fun (it's Scalzi), and it's just light-hearted and entertaining with humongous creatures stomping around. Sometimes flying. Sometimes the descriptions of human and giant monster characters are a little vague, promoting the reader to fill in gaps, shifting perceptions along the way. I occasionally pictured the ginormous and tinormous critters as drawn by Jack Kirby, but that's because I love his monsters anyway, but my perceptions were fluid enough to fit them in with the world Scalzi created. Your vision will probably be *completely* different from mine, and honestly that's cool. The Kaiju Preservation Society. That's just what they do!