The Kaiju Preservation Society

 

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi (2022 Tor paperback 264pp)

 

 

I’ve been a fan of John Scalzi’s writing for about a decade but I’ve never been an obsessive follower of his work. I just tend to pick up what appeals to me and always find myself enjoying his ‘twinkle in the eye’ style of writing.

“The Kaiju Preservation Society” first and foremost is a lot of fun and shouldn’t be taken too seriously. As the author explains in his afterword its an idea that came to him after a big serious novel didn’t work out. He ran with the idea and that resulted an enjoyable romp of a story.

The plot, such as it is, is pretty simple. We follow the main character Jamie as he loses his middle management position at a food delivery start-up and ends up as a delivery driver for the same firm.

One of his regular customers offers him a new position and it turns out to entail working on an alternate earth that’s been kept secret since it was discovered due to nuclear testing in the 1950s.

On this alternate earth (accessed via a portal in Iceland) there live unusual lifeforms, some of which are huge Godzilla style creatures known as “Kaiju” (after the monsters of Japanese movies) who are powered by natural nuclear reactors. The Kaiju Preservation Society is an organisation who studies and tends to these creatures from a few bases on the other side.

We follow Jamie as he’s inducted into the KPS, undergoes training and meets his fellow workers. It’s a lot of light-hearted and enjoyable fun. I would have been happy if things were left there but of course a big bad threat had to be dropped into the story and this leads to a big action movie style sequence where Jamie (of course) has to help save the world.

Nothing too demanding and a lot of fun ideas in this book, pure entertainment without any pretension.