Sneak Peek for Starter Villain
John Scalzi
My less than enthusiastic rating for Sneak Peek for Starter Villain is not meant to imply any lack of enthusiasm for Starter Villain itself. I have pre-ordered the latter and intend to gobble it down rapidly tomorrow. My disappointment is only because I had hoped that the sneak peek would get us far enough into the book for something interesting and unexpected to happen, some hint of what is to come, and that really doesn't happen in these first three chapters. So far there is just one very slightly weird detail (having to do with a wedding present), but that's it!
The story is told in the first person by someone called Charlie. Having embarrassed myself by missing the gender ambiguity of Jamie, the first-person narrator of The Kaiju Preservation Society, I paid attention this time. And I found this, among other things:
“Your mother meant a great deal to him, like I said. He was curious about her son.”
"Son" looks unambiguous. Charlie is a boy, at least for now. And I will use boy pronouns for him, until explicitly instructed otherwise.