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Speculative Fiction Book Club - Starter Villain

  • Lost City Books 2467 18th Street Northwest Washington, DC, 20009 United States (map)

The October Spec-Fic Book Club pick is Starter Villain by John Scalzi. We’ll be meeting on Wednesday, October 25th at 7pm.

About the book:

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place.


Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.