The Kaiju Preservation Society: Shortlisted for the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Novel

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It had an abundance of that irreverent humour and banter I associate with the author's writing style.

She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her.Still, desperate for anything that will help pay the bills, Jamie signs on, and the next thing he knows, he’s jetting off with his new team to Greenland where they’re told they’ll be doing fieldwork for the next little while. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson.

Tom has an urgent vacancy on his team: the pay is great and Jamie has debts – it’s a no-brainer choice. I was originally going to give this book a 2/5 (I came back after a few months to change it from a 3/5 to a 2/5, why? Yes, the in-jokes and genre references bristle with all the alacrity of an amorous hedgehog, but there is enough fun here to go around. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony , Fuzzy Nation , Lock In , and also Redshirts , which won 2013's Hugo Award for Best Novel. It also needs to be said how wonderfully diverse the characters are and how that is treated as a given.His story struck me as especially poignant, and these words describing the Kaiju Preservation Society endorsed his book perfectly: KPS is not… a brooding symphony of a novel. Tom describes the organisation he works for as an ‘animal rights organisation’, the animals are big and in need of preservation, and the team are down a labourer, a grunt to do the heavy lifting. I hadn't realized when I read the book the first time that Scalzi manages to tell the entire tale without revealing Jamie Gray's gender. It realigned the beanbag so I was in a slightly less compacted position, but my tablet slid into the well my body had created.

The evil plot would seem creaky and melodramatic if it weren’t such an accurate satiric mirror of the current sociopolitical milieu. It won a 2023 Alex Award, the American Library Association's annual award recognizing the ten best adult books that appeal to teen readers. I attempted to lean forward in the beanbag and succeeded only in driving my ass farther into its recesses. He stated as much in his author’s afterword that he wrote this novel as an escape, a way to let loose and take a break from the crappiness of what’s happening in the world, and the results are something we can all be thankful for. Loved many of the funny and touching moments, as well as hated the characters the author wanted me to.I believe what makes The Kaiju Presevation Society so accessible is that although the majority of the characters are scientific experts in their given field, Niamh with astrology, Kahurangi with chemistry, and Aparna with biology, having Jamie, a labourer whose main job title is to “lift things'', made those characters have to explain certain theories to him in simple ways. If fun was what we were gunning for, I would've liked seeing this as more of a Parks and Rec kind of thing. There's a diverse cast, entertaining banter, lots of good swearing, pop culture references at a level I found entertaining rather than intrusive, and I have a low tolerance for that. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side.

Maybe it's the cynical attitude, or the depression, or both, but at no point did I think about relaxing and having fun. A large print hardcover edition was issued by Thorndike Press on July 27, 2022, and a trade paperback edition by Tor Books on January 24, 2023. Fortunately, there’s a direct and accompanying side effect of extreme lassitude, which keeps most people from acting on the urge.Yes, it’s hilarious and fun and at times almost ridiculous in a way a combo of a blockbuster and a sitcom can be.