Low(brow) Society

I've read (and posted about) several books by John Scalzi over the years. He's been writing for quite a while, at a fairly rapid pace -- so I've never really been at the leading edge of his books. But that changed this year when I did make time for his newest release, The Kaiju Preservation Society.

Quite simply, the book is built around the premise that a parallel Earth is a world dominated by actual, this-is-where-the-stories-about-Godzilla-really-come-from, giant monsters. In particular, it's the story of one person brought aboard a research company that conducts scientific research in that parallel world.

John Scalzi includes a rather substantial Afterword to this book, describing how it quickly came to exist when another book he was writing didn't pan out. COVID had arrived, the more serious novel he'd been writing held no joy, and he had just informed his publisher that he was (much to his regret, and against his custom) not going to make his deadline. Then, The Kaiju Preservation Society sprang into his mind, and from there into his word processor in very short order.

I think it would have been helpful had this Afterword actually been a Foreword to the book, because it does a great job of expectations-setting. This book was meant to be fun. Obviously, I knew that on some level when I started reading, from the goofy title alone. And anyone who has read any other Scalzi books (or seen his installments of the series Love, Death and Robots) knows that his hallmarks are sarcastic and witty characters, pop culture references, and glib treatment even of dark subject matter.

Still, I don't think I was ready for The Kaiju Preservation Society to be this much about having fun -- only, nothing more. The premise is great. The world-building is light. But the narrative borders on non-existent. Things happen to protagonist Jamie Gray, and obviously there is a sequence of events. But it felt to me like nothing but world-building, following a "stranger in a strange land," for nearly two-thirds of the book. It's very late in the page count when anything like a quest/complication/jeopardy manifests. And when it does, it has a fairly pat resolution that feels like an afterthought.

Now don't get me wrong, the book is still pretty fun to read. For the most part. In the middle third, my enjoyment really waned -- not because the setting was any less entertaining, but because I was impatient for something to actually "happen." Had I been better armed with Scalzi's Afterword, "this book is just fun, at a time where I really needed something that was just fun," I might have more easily succumbed to its charms. Because those charms are there, even if a strong story isn't. This book will make you laugh, or at least smile.

I suspect that my outlook turned a book that I might have graded a B into something far less enjoyable; I'd actually call The Kaiju Preservation Society a C+. But if you're just looking for a fluffy escape (indeed, the protagonist is literally escaping from the world of COVID in 2020), then perhaps you'll like it more than I did.