Starter Villain
John Scalzi
(2023)

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.

Essentially a satire on Corporate America. Fun and inventive. It does spend half of the story just setting up the world and the cats and characters.

Then there is a bit of a rush to resolve the story and have everyone live happily ever-after.