Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi.
Introduction
In Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, Jaime Gray lost his job and is delivering food now. It’s early in the pandemic and COVID-19 makes Jaime’s job difficult. Jamie’s old friend Tom offers Jamie a job to help the KPS as a grunt. Jaime takes the job and goes through a portal and makes friends with others working for the KPS. Huge creatures called Kaiju live on the land near the portal. Bad people want to use Kaiju for their short-sighted purposes. Will Jaime and their friends save the Kaiju and prevent a catastrophic event from occurring back on Earth?
Summary
In Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, Jaime Gray goes into a performance review by the boss, Rob Sanders, expecting a great review. Jamie works at a food delivery service in New York City. Jamie is demoted to a delivery person by Sanders, who he calls a deliverator. It’s the middle of COVID-19 so there are limited job opportunities in New York City. With the lockdown food service delivery is Jamie’s only viable job opportunity so Jaime starts delivering food for the boss.
Six months later Sanders sells the business and Jamie is out of a job and prospects. On the last delivery ever, Jamie meets an old friend named Tom Stevens. They talk about Jamie’s situation and Tom offers Jamie a contract job as a grunt. Tom says the job is with an animal rights organization protecting large animals. Tom sends Jamie to an intake interview. But those animals he mentioned are not what Jamie expects and the location isn’t either. It’s the beginning of a wild adventure.
Recommendation
I thought Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi was a great and fun novel. The novel was short and featured Scalzi’s dry brand of humor. I liked how the author featured the pandemic in the novel, but the irreverent humor balanced the seriousness of the subject. I wonder if in the future the pandemic will be less than a footnote in future works. In this novel, it is important to the plot. I thought it was interesting that the author didn’t reveal Jamie’s gender. It is like the Locked-In series, where the author doesn’t reveal Chris’s gender. Scalzi doesn’t make a big deal about this, but it makes the reader think about the reader’s preconceptions coming into the novel. I had a good time reading this novel and look forward to reading more like it.
Links
This is the link to the Goodreads page for Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57807199-the-kaiju-preservation-society
Redshirts by John Scalzi is a stand-alone novel like KPS, and it features the same type of humor done so well in this novel. I recommend this novel if you liked Redshirts.
Review of Redshirts by John Scalzi, Ensign Andrew Dahl is assigned to the starship Intrepid. Crewmembers on away missions die at an alarming rate, but not the officers. Dahl must discover the unbelievable truth, or he will die like the other Redshirts.