lowkey i had no expectations going into this. but this book was perfect for the week ive had LMAO. i will always love my dark gritty gorey horrors but sometimes you need a book where a good called poopfruit exists and there are two kaiju named after twilight ❤️

the only “issue” i had with this book was one ill always have within the scifi genre, which is that the world confused my simpleton mind too much even after explanations. jamie is the perfect main character because he is the everyman in a location where literally everyone has a PHD so i thought the explanations of how the world worked would be explained simpler for jamie in-universe and therefore me but…. not really. like only really at the end did i get the core mechanism of how the kaiju earth works and the “barrier” concept. like i could not work it out in my head. that kind of goes for…. well every other sciencey thing in this book. 

the plot at times also felt a bit…. Meh? not bad, but not engaging. if this book was not as humorous as it was i could defo see myself not having fun because the plot was a bit basic & predictable. but honestly im not too mad because i had a great time. 

the cast of characters were fun. i really liked jamie’s inner circle, they were all super engaging. special shout out to niamh the resident they/them 🔥🔥🔥🔥 ugh i love books where a character is lgbt+ and nobody gives a shit. “ok niamh uses they/them pronouns who cares we’ve got literal fucking kaiju on our hands”. I LOVEE ITTT. i will say having *everyone* be this goofy on the job did throw me out of the immersion a lot, and at the award ceremony thing i defo was cringing from the facebook-esque humour. but that’s literally like 4 pages so can i really be that annoyed? nah.

i do think this book wonderfully toes the line between explaining the “magic” vs not over explaining it and making it stupid, but i fear i am just too stupid. i could nawt fully go with the flow because i still was trying to work out how the fuck kaijus exist. yeah i probably would’ve liked this more if i could just let go and go along for the ride but im autistic. sue me.

honestly with how fun this was scalzi has easily pushed himself into one of my favourite authors of the year. and all his books are now at the very top of my tbr. i had such fun with this, i can’t wait to see what his other books entail