Another Hugo nominee. Charlie is a substitute teacher who lives in his father’s old house. His half-siblings are pushing him to sell it. He barely manages to live and take care of his cats with his meager salary. He then sees a news item saying that his uncle has died. The uncle was supposedly extremely rich and owned a large chain of parking garages. The uncle hasn’t had any contact with the family since his sister, the main character’s mother, died. It turns out that the uncle left everything to Charlie. And “everything” was not just a parking garage empire, but a vast criminal organization including a volcano lair on a remote island. With cats. These cats happen to be intelligent and able to communicate using special keyboards. In contrast, the dolphins are able to speak but have really mean personalities. A meeting with the leaders of other similar crime organizations is approaching, and Charlie must take part. He has no real experience in the corporate world and even less in managing giant criminal organizations. Luckily, he has good help from his uncle’s very capable personal assistant and his cats, who, besides being intelligent, were spying on him on behalf of his uncle.
A pretty entertaining and light (and short) novel. It is clearly better than Scalzi's nomination from last year, but it is still more like quick entertainment than something to be taken seriously. The inner voice of the main character was pretty much the same as in last year's nominee and in a few other of his books. The writing was adequate - not great, but perhaps a bit better than in last year’s book. I don’t believe it is award material, though. It is just fun, fast reading to pass your time. It is not something durable, or new, or exceptionally well written or plotted. It won’t be among my top choices.
264 pp
No comments:
Post a Comment