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Starter Villain review: Big questions laced with absurdist humour

The protagonist of John Scalzi's excellent new sci-fi novel is trying to find his way out of existential misery. So is the hero of Lavie Tidhar's The Circumference of the World. But at their hearts, both books are setting out to explore what on earth we are doing here, finds Sally Adee

13 September 2023

cat manager in a suit sitting in the office; Shutterstock ID 368566592; purchase_order: -; job: -; client: -; other: - — Managerial cats provide a lighter moment in John Scalzi’s Starter Villain
Kuban_girl/Shutterstock

Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon Publications)

John Scalzi (Macmillan 21 September, UK; 19 September, US)

DANIEL CHASE, a dealer of rare books, is sitting at his aunt’s deathbed. “She sighed in the way distant members of my family, who never otherwise took much interest… always sighed when my name came up in conversation: ‘I feel that you’ll need all the help you can get in life.'”

Charlie Fitzer has also been written off as a struggling middle-school teacher with a failed…

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