Review: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi is a total blast of a sci-fi book

As the seasons turn and books continue to amass on shelves at stores, I've found myself carving out time not only for new releases, but for some older books I'd always meant to get around to and hadn't yet. One of the latest that I've read is The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi...and friends, I had a blast with this book. So I need to tell you all about it, so that you too might have a good time with this whimsical read.

I'd read a few John Scalzi books before, like Old Man's War and Starter Villain, and enjoyed all of them. But The Kaiju Preservation Society struck that perfect balance between fun, science, and adventure that made for a memorable light sci-fi read. To put it simply, I'd enjoyed all the previous John Scalzi books I'd been exposed to, but The Kaiju Preservation Society might be the first one that I truly loved.

The format may have been a factor in that: I devoured The Kaiju Preservation Society over a few days on a road trip, listening to the audiobook version narrated by Wil Wheaton. So this review will be a little different than the norm. First I'm going to talk about the book itself, and then I'll get into the audiobook and how Wheaton's narration made it even more of a good time. There will be mild spoilers for the setup of The Kaiju Preservation Society.

Book review: The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi

If you've read any John Scalzi book before, you know some of the things to expect in The Kaiju Preservation Society. It's got humor, it's got fun worldbuilding, it's got a great mixture of science and action and pop culture references; Scalzi consistently delivers enjoyable yet easily digestible novels, and this one is no exception. It clocks in at just over 250 pages, making it a fast read no matter your format of choice.

As for what it's about, the title is pretty self-explanatory. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, down-on-his-luck food delivery guy Jamie Gray is approached by an acquaintance from his past with a mysterious job opportunity. In need of a life change, Jamie signs up even though he won't actually find out the details for this new job until he's on site. All he knows is he'll be helping preserve large, exotic animals. It isn't long before he finds out those animals are kaiju, and they're just as big and dangerous as you'd expect.

In essence, the Kaiju Preservation Society is an organization committed to studying and protecting monstrous, Godzilla-like beasts who dwell on an alternate Earth, making sure they don't cross over into our world and wreak havoc — or that humans don't come into their world with ill intentions. They live in a few bases around the globe, and the one we spend the most time at in the novel, Tanaka Base, has the vibe of a summer camp where everyone is a science nerd tackling some aspect or other of kaiju study or base maintenance. Jamie fits into the latter category; he lifts things. Literally. He's an orderly of sorts, and very content with that role after how his last corporate employer füdmüd, a competitor to Uber Eats and Grubhub, screwed him over.

So Jamie goes off to a place that feels like kaiju summer camp, where he helps disperse pheromones to get the giant beasties to go where the scientists want (or keep them away), makes a bunch of new friends who are causticly witty to different degrees, and discovers some new things about himself and his former employer along the way. If this all sounds a little ridiculous, fret not; that is very much something Scalzi embraces and which works in the book's favor. There're plenty of fun anecdotes about how our own real-world kaiju stories came about thanks to the unpredictable nature of the actual kaiju in the book, commentary on how corporate greed ruins peoples lives for spreadsheet values or personal gain, and reflections on how stepping into the unknown can sometimes bring about great and wonderful life changes.

In the afterword of the book, Scalzi opens up about how he wrote The Kaiju Preservation Society after struggling for months with a particularly difficult novel that he ultimately abandoned. Instead, he wrote this fun romp which he likens to a "pop song," meant to entertain and give us some warm fuzzies rather than leave us staring into the abyssal void of soul-shatteirng literature. I found that framing to be absolutely spot on. The Kaiju Preservation Society is fun and heartwarming first and foremost, and it succeeds wonderfully at that. But it also has a bit more heft than, say, Starter Villain, making for a read that is both fun and fulfilling by its final pages. That's a balance that's more challenging to strike than it seems, so I was really pleased when I got to the end of The Kaiju Preservation Society and had nothing but positive feelings about the journey it had taken me on.

The Kaiju Preservation Society is a stellar audiobook

Now, let's talk a little bit about the audiobook specifically. As I mentioned, it's narrated by Wil Wheaton, who's basically a nerd icon thanks to his years on Star Trek: The Next Generation and his continued work in genre spaces. That Wheaton can narrate a good audiobook is pretty much beyond doubt. But what I was delighted by with The Kaiju Preservation Society is just how well Wheaton's brand of nerdery meshes together with Scalzi's writing style. All of the characters in The Kaiju Preservation Society are big nerds who read sci-fi books and debate the finer points of physics and biology, so when Wheaton emphasizes things in a certain way that plays into that, it really elevates the material.

He does a few voices for different characters, and they all work well, but he doesn't go so hard with it that it's ever distracting. Wheaton isn't the sort of narrator who tries to disappear into the characters like an audiobook chameleon, raising and lowering the pitch of his voice and such. It always sounds like Wil Wheaton, just sometimes with a French Canadian accent or slightly different cadence. And that works really well in my opinion.

It also sounds like Wheaton is having just as much fun narrating The Kaiju Preservation Society as you'd expect a reader to have listening to it, which made the whole experience better. There are plenty of moments where Wheaton sounds like he's on the verge of cracking up as he reads, where you can practically hear the smile on his face coming through. Together with the "pop song" feel of the book, it just makes it a really fun ride from start to finish. I wouldn't hesitate to listen to another Wheaton/Scalzi audiobook after The Kaiju Preservation Society, or even give this one a re-read. (In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I went out and bought a physical paper copy after listening anyway to revisit it.)

Verdict

The Kaiju Preservation Society is a total blast, and a really enjoyable sci-fi adventure to check out if you're looking for a lighter read that nonetheless has a bunch of heart, great twists, and some exhilarating moments mixed in along the way. It has a lot of the staples of John Scalzi's novels, like his great sense of humor, but manages to strike the balance between drama and sci-fi shenanigans better than most. Combine it with some very fun audiobook narration by Wil Wheaton, and it's a perfect listen for a long roadtrip or similar outing.

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