Welcome to my weekly segment, Waiting on Wednesday, where I look at upcoming books that I am planning to order and review in the next few months and which I think I will really enjoy.  I run this segment in conjunction with the Can’t-Wait Wednesday meme that is currently running at Wishful Endings.  Stay tuned to see reviews of these books when I get a copy of them.  In this latest Waiting on Wednesday, I highlight one of the more entertaining sounding books of 2023 with the fun new release from John Scalzi, Starter Villain.

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There are few authors in the world right now that are more inventive and more hilarious that the always imaginative John Scalzi.  Best known for his Old Man’s War and The Interdependency series, Scalzi has made a name for himself by producing captivating reads that make excellent use of high-concept science fiction elements.  I have only had the opportunity to read a few of his books yet, but the ones that I have were pretty damn epic.  This includes the incredible and brilliant standalone novel Redshirts, which serves as the ultimate parody of Star Trek by focusing on an Enterprise-esque spaceship whose ordinary crew start to realise that something very wrong is happening when all of them start brutally dying in ridiculous situations.  This was an outstanding read and my love of Redshirts led me to read his 2022 release, The Kaiju Preservation Society.  A clever new take on monster movies, The Kaiju Preservation Society saw a young man join a mysterious scientific organisation that protects giant monsters in an alternate dimension.  I absolutely powered through both of these books, and I love the incredible scenarios Scalzi comes up with.

Needless to say, I am a pretty big fan of Scalzi at this point, but I was even more excited when I saw that his next book was going to take on the superhero/supervillain genre with the fantastic upcoming book Starter Villain.  Set for release in September 2023, Starter Villain is another hilarious sounding novel that sees a young protagonist enter the world of capes and capers when they unwillingly become a supervillain.

Plot Synopsis:

Following the bestselling The Kaiju Preservation Society, John Scalzi returns with Starter Villain, another unique sci-fi caper set in the strangest of all worlds, present-day Earth.

And the fact that in the overall organization, they’re management…

Ok, so there is absolutely no way that I am not going to have a ball of fun when I read Starter Villain later this year.  I’m already a big fan of comic books and superheros and any great parody or deconstruction of this genre is always a blast to read.  Having this parody written by John Scalzi, who is planning to focus on the supervillain side of things, is an incredible recipe for success and one that I am pretty damn excited for.  This synopsis is already painting a pretty awesome picture of what Starter Villain is going to feature, including lairs, minions and sentient, sinister cats, which I am always down for.  This is going to be such an entertaining and amazing book and I cannot wait to get my hands on Starter Villain later this year.