Starter Villain
by John Scalzi · first published 2023
7mentions
4recommended by
7HN commenters
2023–2026first – last mentioned
57% recommend43% neutral
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This reminded me of "Starter Villain"! [1]. Don't want to give away the plot, but I'll say its a fun read. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Starter-Villain-John-Scalzi/dp/076538...
on “The CIA's Cold War plan to use stray cats as spies” ↗john scalzi: starter villain note, if your wife doesn't like to be woken up, do not try to read this next to her in bed. you will LoL, and wake her up.
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you've read so far in 2024?” ↗…rare these days with so many other author wanting their first novel to be the first of a series of thousand page tomes absolutely chock full of wheel spinning and padding. You can pick up something like Starter Villain and read it in an afternoon and thoroughly enjoy it. Other novels to check out include Androids Dream, Agent to the Stars, Redshirts, and Kaiju Preservation Society.
on “Ági Szabados Does Not Need to Apologize to Me” ↗…endings, with exposition and some kind of reveal that felt out of character. I also admit lost interest in Old Man's War after The Last Colony. Redshirts however is a master class in satire of Trek, and Starter Villain made me laugh. I also admit Wil Wheaton's narration of his books always feels spot on to me.
on “Murderbot, she wrote” ↗Next we'll need dolphin unions. This is actually the sub-plot of the John Scalzi novel "Starter Villain".
on “The US Navy Put Cameras on Dolphins and the Results Were Wild” ↗The idea of a sabotage-whale armed with torpedoes reminds me of the book Starter Villain by John Scalzi. (It's... relatively zany.)
on “Sweden Investigates New Cable Break Under Baltic Sea” ↗Boy I have not seen Scalzi's bluesky but I gotta imagine there's a minion named Hugh getting a nasty splinter in a Starter Villain sequel
on “The End of an Era” ↗