It’s fine. That’s all, just fine.

It’s not Redshirts, it’s not Old Man’s War. There are no poignant lessons to be learned from the story. In fact, I might say it’s Scalzi’s dumbest story yet, in the sense that I was entertained, but didn’t learn anything. Not about identity or socio-politico-economies or what makes a person a person. Seems like Scalzi’s not exploring serious themes in his books anymore. The SRE (Satisfying Reader Experience) was minimal.

Half the novel is infodumping and learning the premise. The Kaiju Preservation Society was much the same way, where the plot took a backseat to world-building. And in this novel, there’s nothing fantastic that needs explaining, which makes the exposition more superfluous. The central conceit is that there’s a secret society of supervillains that keep the world economy running and they’re all trying to take each other. And it’s just not very funny. This book doesn’t feel like it’s about anything. I’m disappointed.

And don’t let the cover lie to you. There are cats in here and they do talk, but there are no cat people or business cats or people with cat heads. It’s a funny cover but it’s misleading about the content therein.