The Good: Lighthearted, fun, nerdy, and full of banter
The Bad: Over-the-top antagonist; will age fast
The Literary: Plenty of references to classic science fiction

Jamie Gray is struggling in an dead end job as a food delivery driver in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic. When he's offered a grunt-work job that pays a lot more money to work with exotic animals, he jumps at the opportunity. He soon learns why he has to sign a non-disclosure agreement and why he'll be away from home for a six-month stretch. The animals that he will care for are not of our Earth, but from an alternate dimension Earth where giant Kiaju roam an exceedingly dangerous jungle.

I think this book is best described by a quote from the author in the acknowledgements. “KPS is not, and I say this with absolutely no slight intended, a brooding symphony of a novel. It’s a pop song. It’s meant to be light and catchy, with three minutes of hooks and choruses for you to sing along with, and then you’re done and you go on with your day, hopefully with a smile on your face.”

Scalzi excels at lighthearted and fun sci-fi novels that showcase his enthusiasm for science nerds and science fiction. This particular novel is just that and delivers at the perfect time in our collective zeitgeist. You'll love references to Neil Stephenson, Frankenstein, Murderbot, Jurassic Park, Twilight, Doom Eternal, and of course, Godzilla. Even better, there's some science fiction in here too, using real science like the square-cube law to describe why kaiju can't exist, but then pushing into science fiction territory with organic beings that evolved internal nuclear chambers.

I particularly enjoy the humor, the banter, the setups and callbacks, and the persistent thematic traits (I lift things) that endear the characters the more you spend time with them. There's plenty of action and excitement, particularly towards the climax, but Scalzi gives the good feels too (yay friendship). The characters are diverse and the story feels inclusive (from a Westerner's viewpoint), which is standard for Scalzi, but surprisingly hard for some authors to achieve. In fact, Scalzi has written several protagonists as gender neutral, never referred to as a specific pronoun, by he or she. Jamie is a gender neutral name, and looking back, it's entirely possible that I just assumed Jaime is a dude, even though all the other characters just call the POV Jaime.

This one isn't likely to go down in science fiction history. The antagonist is very mustache-twirly, but he's easy to dislike, being white, rich, male, and entitled. Read this if you need some good in a world where there is a lot of bad.

It's 2020, and Jamie Gray is in deep shit in NYC, like many people. He's been fired from his marketing job, has no income, and his roommates are in the same boat. A chance meeting with an acquaintance results in an unexpected opportunity for Jamie to escape the city and make a living: a position with the Kaiju Preservation Society. Jamie signs on, desperate but not sure what he's in for.

This is Scalzi at his most fun. The book is an absolute delight. It's fast-paced, charming, and action-packed-- a marvelous fiction escape. Highly, highly recommended.

One particularly lovely element I want to recognize: Scalzi's work to normalize non-cisgender characters. I hope it inspires more authors to do the same.

This was my first book by Scalzi, and wow did it impress me! I have a soft spot for kaiju in general, so it was great to see a piece of media that focused on preservation over eradication without glossing over the fact that they are incredibly dangerous. One thing that I admired about this book was the casual diversity sprinkled throughout and the lack of love interest. A nice, refreshing read!

I was given a free Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book by Tor Books via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you, Tor Books! I was so excited to be approved for an early review copy of this, and I devoured it almost in one sitting. I love John Scalzi’s Interdependency Series, so I was on the look-out for more new books by him. Although, this book was nothing like what I expected in the best way.

The Kaiju Preservation Society is told from the perspective of Jamie Gray. It starts just as the world is on the cusp of the Covid-19 pandemic, and Jamie is about to lose his job in marketing at a food delivery app start-up called füdmüd. He left a doctorate program in literature for this opportunity, and now, the rich Daddy’s boy CEO is kicking him to the curb just as the pandemic gets underway. In order to pay his rent, Jamie, much to his chagrin, must now become a food delivery person for the very company he was just fired from. Luckily this also allows him to catch up with an old college friend named Tom who offers him a job.

This is where the story really kicks off. Tom doesn’t tell Jamie anything about the job except that it’s with endangered wildlife and he would basically be a gofer for everyone else. Since that’s what Jamie has been doing for months as a delivery driver, he sees no reason not to go ahead with taking the job that pays better. Little does he know that decision will lead him on the adventure of a lifetime, and just as a bonus, he will be able to get revenge on his old boss later as well.

The Kaiju Preservations Society is a light-hearted and often hilarious story about what might happen if alternate universes really existed. On one of these alternate universes, kaiju monsters are real, and they are in danger. It’s the titular organization’s job to not only ensure their continued existence, but to do so in secret. Well, as secretly as they can and still secure proper funding that is. These 6-month-long expeditions to another universe aren’t cheap you know.

I really liked the idea that anyone could potentially be picked to work for the KPS. Jamie had no real qualifications outside of his stint as a delivery person and the fact that his friend recommended him. It was nice to see a normal everyday guy be able to take advantage of connections to get himself out of a financial struggle instead of it always being the rich Daddy’s boy type.

Once he starts work, Jamie quickly learns that the job he signed up for, while worthwhile, could end up getting him killed if he isn’t careful. In fact, he learns that Earth has known about the kaiju ever since Godzilla (yes, he was real) escaped onto our side of the dimensional barrier and died. He quickly ingratiates himself with other first-time expeditioners, and I really appreciated how his character was allowed to fit in with all the scientists. Just goes to show being a super-nerd will get you friends anywhere.

In fact, most of the story took place on Kaiju Earth and the scientific base set up there to help study and preserve the different species of kaiju. It followed Jamie in his daily routine (“I lift things.”), and on some less routine adventures where he has to save his new friends from local fauna intent on eating them. Everything is going great until tourists from our Earth stop by for a visit. It becomes evident very quickly that there are people who would love nothing more to exploit what they see on Kaiju Earth for their own gains.

That is another overarching theme of the book. The KPS has to not only help the kaiju survive and flourish. They also have to keep them from being exploited. We as humans do enjoy exploiting animals and anything else we deem a resource instead of trying to protect and conserve. The story made it very clear that we should seek to do more protecting if we wanted to stay safe. Including protecting ourselves from things that can harm us.

My two favorite things about this book, though, were the humor and the bad guy getting his comeuppance. I won’t give away who the real bad guy ends up being as it isn’t revealed until the latter third of the book but suffice it to say I was downright gleeful when he got what was coming to him. As for the humor, it was fantastic. The book is littered with sarcastic remarks and quotable phrases (my personal favorite being “I lift things.”). There are so many that I would put on a shirt to wear, and I want to make a meme out of at least one of them.

Overall, this book was a joy to read. As John Scalzi mentions in the acknowledgements, “Sometimes you need a pop song,” and that’s exactly what this book is. It’s just a fun sci-fi romp with giant kaiju monsters, egomaniacal rich kids, and super nerds who want to save the world.

I gave The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi four out of five stars. It is a light-hearted and hilarious adventure to another world that every young nerd hoped in their hearts existed. If you want to read a fun sci-fi palette cleanser between your space opera tomes, then this is the book for you.

Laugh out loud funny and full of action (which normally bores me to tears but Scalzi always manages to pull it off), this latest standalone novel from one of my favorite SF authors is a breath of fresh air.

Jamie Gray — a recently fired, PhD drop out (her dissertation was going to be on utopian and dystopian literature), is making an unhappy living as a deliverator when a chance customer offers her a job with an animal rights organization. Only as it turns out, the “animals” are more ecosystem than animal, are absolutely humongous (and scary), and don’t exactly live on this particular version of Earth. Armed with her sci-fi mindset and a talent for lifting things (think heavy, not theft), Jamie manages to save the day … quite often. Added bonuses: Godzilla origin story explained and Snow Crash properly revered.

For Scalzi newbies, a few writing extracts:

“It’s more like we have a workable service relationship with a tenuous personal history.”

“It was stupidly perfect how all my problems were suddenly solved with the strategic application of money.”

“I’m officially skeptical about this Godzilla origin story.”

“That thing looks like H.P. Lovecraft’s panic attack.”

“It’s not the trees, you dense argumentative spoon.”

This book is a SF thriller and the best entertainment I could have wished for!

It's smart, nerdy & geeky fun. Yes there's a difference and this book is both. I can't think of higher praise right now 😄 think Jurassic Park but less deadly (though not completely), shorter and funnier. Honestly, I was laughing out loud alone at 3 am, and I am deeply thankful for that!

Jamie had a decent job, but with Covid shutdowns looming in New York he finds himself laid off. So just to make money he takes a lower position with the company and now finds himself a delivery person similar to doordash. One day he delivers to a person that turned out to be a old friend, Tom. But after a few months Tom tells Jamie he won't be ordering for a long while as his company is sending him away on business, it dawns on Tom to offer Jamie a recently vacated position on his team and without knowing anything about the job other than he will be lifting things Jamie takes it. But what happens next will rock his world.

This was a great book that kept me up past my bedtime a few nights to see what happened next. This book is action packed and will grab your attention and not let go until a while after you finish and process it all. I can not say enough about this wonderful book other than I will be recommending it a lot.

This review will appear on my blog on March 15th.

If there's one thing besides death and taxes you can on, it's John Scalzi writing an entertaining and poignant book that both entertains you and has things to say about society. He seems to have two different veins of books - some that are part of a series and slowly build over time to a dramatic yet satisfying conclusion while still providing the reader with plenty of enjoyment throughout the story, and the stand-alone novels that come out swinging and are a perfect one-shot, self-contained adventure. The Kaiju Preservation Society continues that tradition of the one-offs admirably - the characters develop and the action flows quickly, the barbs and jabs land as if guided by Muhammad Ali, and the book urges you to keep reading for just another chapter. I don't think I managed to put this one down until I finished. Even in the middle of winter (or early spring), this book is a strong contender for my "best read while swaying in the sun in a hammock in the summer" series. I will continue to devour anything Scalzi writes with eager enthusiasm.

John Scalzi is always fun to read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The contrast between the main character's pre-Kaiju job experiences and his Kaiju travel made the Kaiju seem even more unreal. I highly recommend this story as a quick getaway from real life.

This book is pure Scalzi. A little absurd, a little serious, and a page turner. Kaiju, gig economy, hyper capitalism, and potential world ending catastrophe, what's there to not love?

As a stand alone this is a pretty good place to jump into his work if you haven't read the author before, if you're already a fan of Scalzi you know what to expect and it doesn't disappoint.

Early in the pandemic, Jamie escapes his food delivery drudgery by accepting a mysterious offer for a job with a secretive organization focused on protecting large animals. Those animals turn out to be kaiju--monsters such as Godzilla--on an alternate Earth. Most of his fellow employees are scientists with doctorates; Jamie is there to lift things. The job is amazing and occasionally terrifying. Then the evil billionaire shows up. (No, really.)

Smoothly written and a lot of fun.

Another fun adventure from John Scalzi! This book has the most descriptive title of any book I've read this year. It's about the Kaiju Preservation Society, and it's about what you'd expect from a book with that title.

If you're not familiar with John Scalzi, he writes books that are heavy on a specific type of banter. I personally enjoy it, but sometimes the banter overrides the unique voices of his characters, and that is especially the case in this book. If you're reading quickly it can actually be difficult to distinguish characters via their 'voice', and so the book is more heavily reliant on dialogue tags than I might like. The banter is fun though!

If you're looking for a book that has large scifi monsters, nuclear explosions, fun worldbuilding, and is heavy on lines like "what the actual fuck", this is the book for you.

(My review will run on Geek Vibes Nation and Thoroughly Modern Reviewer on the novel's publication date.)

I think it's safe to say that nobody's been watching the most recent "Godzilla" movies for their stunning human characters. No, we're all just there for the cool world-building and the big Kaiju vs Kaiju action scenes. But imagine a book that combines cool world-building, bombastic action scenes, and compelling characters, and you might end up with something like John Scalzi's "The Kaiju Preservation Society." Featuring a breezy plot, well-rounded characters, and blockbuster-worthy thrills, "The Kaiju Preservation Society" is as good as the best Kaiju movies. A fun read from start to finish, "The Kaiju Preservation Society" might just be the pick-me-up we all need right now.

It’s March 2020, the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Jamie Gray’s stuck working as a food delivery driver. Jamie lives from paycheck to paycheck, month after month, just trying to make ends meet. But when an old college acquaintance offers the job of a lifetime, Jamie gets drawn into something straight out of a sci-fi film. An alternate Earth full of giant Kaiju and secret organizations dedicated to protecting them. But not all who visit “Kaiju Earth” do so for altruistic reasons, as Jamie and the other new recruits soon learn. And so it’s a race against time as the Kaiju Preservation Society tries to live up to its name and preserve some Kaiju while also - if they’re lucky- saving the world. Despite its potentially bleak setting, "The Kaiju Preservation Society" reads like the book equivalent of a big, fun action-adventure movie from beginning to end.

"The Kaiju Preservation Society" isn’t all that interested in exploring the societal ramifications of a multi-year-long pandemic or the ethics of taking care of giant, nuclear, potentially destructive monsters who could accidentally slip into our world at a moment’s notice. Instead, it’s more of a B-movie-style romp through various Kaiju movie tropes. Overall, it’s far less plot-driven than you might expect and ends up taking readers on a leisurely stroll through a fun world with some engaging characters. Now, I wouldn’t say most of the characters are depicted with any real depth - save for Jamie, who narrates the story. But Scalzi does a good enough job of making each of the supporting characters distinct enough that it’s pretty easy to overlook how similar they sound. And they're likable enough that you enjoy spending time with them as much as you enjoy all of the cool monsters.

Plot-wise, most of the book acts as the setup for a climax that feels a bit rushed. But whether or not that’s a problem largely depends on what you’re looking for. If you’ve ever watched a "Godzilla" movie and wished they’d spend less time on dueling Kajus and more time exploring the science behind them, then this is the book for you. Here, Scalzi imagines a world where Kaiju are - quite literally - sources of nuclear energy. And naturally, most of the scientists investigating them are trying to figure out how the Kaiju’s biology works while also trying to keep them safe (and secret!) from a public that would revile them at best and take advantage of them at worst. So, on that level, it's a fascinating read. And the science is cool without being incomprehensible. But if you're looking for lots of action, you might be left disappointed.

It takes nearly two-thirds of the book for the central conflict to become apparent. Instead, Scalzi spends most of that time establishing the world and the characters. While all of that is very fun, it does greatly hinder the novel’s ability to build real stakes. And because of that, it feels like the book races through a bunch of stuff in its final third when spreading out some of those revelations and setpieces might’ve given them more weight. Now to be fair, once that central conflict kicks in, it quickly becomes apparent how well Scalzi’s laid the groundwork. Nothing that happens is particularly surprising but is, instead, predictable in the most delightful way. Everything comes together in a very cohesive, satisfying way. Plus, it always helps to have an antagonist that's so unlikable you're hoping they'll suffer a Kaiju-related mishap. But you'll get no spoilers from me.

At the end of the day, "The Kaiju Preservation Society" is a fun, escapist romp in the best way possible. The world is immediately captivating, the characters are engaging, and the plot’s as compelling as some of the best kaiju movies'. But it’s the book’s lighthearted tone that stands out the most. Despite a potentially bleak setting, there’s never a moment that’s not absolutely fun. Each chapter keeps you engaged in the story as you speed from moment to moment, just enjoying the ride and taking in the world. In the author's note, Scalzi likens the experience of reading the book to that of listening to a good pop song. And he's absolutely right. It's light and breezy, with a hook and a good build-up and a big, climactic crescendo that brings it all home. If you’ve ever enjoyed a Kaiju movie, you’ll adore "The Kaiju Preservation Society."

This book is so fun! In late 2020 Jamie gets an opportunity to take on a mysterious job and get out of New York and his job as driver for a food delivery app. It turns out that the job is on an alternative earth where Jamie and the rest of the team work to protect the massive native wildlife of this alternative world.

I love the descriptions of the alternative world and the comparisons to Kaiju and Jurassic Park. I thought the way of imaging a biology that is wildly different from our own and allows absolutely massive creatures to exist was incredibly interesting and fun to read.

I am a regular fan of John Scalzi every since Red Shirts and The Kaiju Preservation Society did not disappoint. The pacing is just right and his humor is spot-on (I will assume his science is right but, since he is talking about SPOILER ALERT nuclear powered Godzillas from an alternate Earth, I have no basis for comparison). Also, read the acknowledgments to find out the genesis of this story and you will like it even more. Another winner!

This book is very entertaining and fun. The world is enganging, the story is dynamic and fast-paced. So far I've liked all of Scalzi's books. The element of a story set in a pandemic period was something that I was little scared to read, but at the end it was a great take on it. The author accomplishes what he says the story is: a pop song - enjoyable and fun.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with this advance reader copy.

Description from NetGalley:
When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization.” Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.
What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble.
It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society who have found their way to the alternate world. Others have, too. And their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.
As a kaiju movie fan, this was a fun read. I love the thought put into a kaiju centered world and what the ecosystems would be like. The characters all feel unique. I had no problem keeping up with all the new information thrown at Tom as he adjusts to this new world. The writing is easy to read. I probably could have read this in a day if I had been able. Highly recommend if you are a fan of the Godzilla and similar movies.
Overall: 4/5

This was a quick and funny read. I went through this manuscript in less than a day. I had hilarious, laugh aloud moments such as when I read "so my choices here are ‘homicidal maniac’ or ‘shit tornado’” or the band could be named "Edward's Tumescent Cloaca." The book takes place during the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic and features a huge government secret and a billionaire who gets his comeuppance. A lovely read!

Old school Scalzi, but better!

I absolutely love John Scalzi and will read anything he writes. I have loved his recent books, but have also missed the fun creatures from his earlier books like Agent to the Stars. The Kaiju Preservation Society brings all the fun, light, fast-paced class Scalzi I have missed but also benefits from his experience and growth as a writer. It is the best of both worlds. It’s set during the pandemic, but it isn’t about the pandemic (thank goodness). The characters are fun, likeable, and basically good (except the ones who aren’t supposed to be). There are monsters, there is humour, and there’s an excellent fast-paced story. You won’t be disappointed.

The Kaiju Preservation Society is a delight of a book! I had so much fun reading it and it completely exceeded my already very high expectations! I don't think I've wanted kaiju to be real and possible to go see more than I do right now, having just finished the story. I loved the descriptions for Kaiju Earth and how unique (and hostile) it is. The characters were also all great and the friendships and teasing were everything. Jamie, our main character, has a very fun personality, but so do all his friends and it's the best. And the action! Super exciting and watching nerds solve problems with mainly science but occasional violence was perfection.

This story is set in the pandemic but also offers some very appreciated escapism without downplaying the reality of (mainly US American) life in 2020. Having a setting where covid exists but our characters are as safe from it as they can get (for a while at least) was very nice to read, especially in 2022. The premise is wild but done so well. You will have fun if you read this book.