The Kaiju Preservation Society

KPS is not, and I say this with absolutely no slight intended, a brooding symphony of a novel. It's a pop song. It's meant to be light and catchy, with three minutes of hooks and choruses for you to sing along with, and then you're done and you go on with your day, hopefully with a smile on your face.

Yes, everyone is including this quote from the Author's Note in their reviews, but I can't resist. This is such a perfectly self-aware encapsulation of the novel. This is fun. There are sympathetic characters who make jokes and become friends. There's bonkers sci-fi stuff, some action, and eventually there's an overarching plot arc that comes to a satisfying conclusion. It does take more than half the book for the main conflict to really come to the fore, but the setup before that is a lot of fun, so who cares?

Also - I love that the main character could be any gender. In general I could have used a little more physical description of characters (and especially of kaiju!), but this choice was lovely.

ALERT: The Author's Note at the end is not to be missed, even if you don't normally read them.
I must pause to recommend reading the Author's Note. It bumped this book from 4 to 4.5 stars for me. Everyone will relate, and it just made me feel seen and understood, and like we all went through something together. I'm glad it will be there decades from now to be read by young nerds who view 2020 through a fuzzy, history-class lens, and give them a surprise: a very poignant, personal time capsule of what this time felt like to live through.

I'll close with a quote from Murderbot (who is lovingly name-dropped in Chapter 1 - yes, I cheered!) that almost perfectly summarizes KPS:

(It was called Worldhoppers, and was about freelance explorers who extended the wormhole and ring networks into uninhabited star systems. It looked very unrealistic and inaccurate, which was exactly what I liked.)