That was weird. Look I laughed a few times but I was just confused the whole way through. Full review to come.

Full review: Well that was weird. Look, I liked everything with the cats and dolphins, but everything else was a big fat no. I was bored senseless reading this book up until the very end. I have found Scalzi to be hit or miss with me. This wasn't a total miss, but it's definitely not one of his I plan on re-reading in the future.

"Starter Villain" follows Charlie. Charlie's divorced, a substitute teacher, and is barely hanging on with making payments on a house he refuses to sell to his half-siblings. When his estranged uncle dies though, Charlie finds out that's he's inherited a criminal empire worth trillions (on paper). The book follows Charlie trying to figure out what is going on, how to stop other villains from winning the day, and keeping himself alive.

Eh. Look, Charlie was fine. He was funny and all, but I don't think I would have been able to just go with the flow here. The other human characters were not well developed at all. I guess you can say because of [redacted] reasons when you get to the end, but I never really got any sense of Mathilda or anyone else employed by Charlie. You know who were well developed, the cats and the dolphins. Frankly, I think I would have liked this better if Scalzi had stuck with them.

The flow was really bad. After the first reveal and the supervillain retreat my eyes started to glaze over. Nothing was really clicking and I felt bored and then annoyed.

The settings in the book (volcano island, etc.) just didn't feel real.

The ending was a big shrug to me. Like I said earlier, Scalzi is either a hit or miss with me. Shame this one was definitely a miss.