The Kaiju Preservation society has everything that makes for an interesting and eye-catching title. We have Kaiju which is the japanese term for a large ancient monster. The most famous kaiju is of course Godzilla who has been gracing our screens for little over 69 years now. The sheer popularity of this behemoth can be seen in the number of iterations that we’ve had in bringing the monster back to the populace. This includes 33 Japanese films, 5 American films, and countless other appearances across comic, books, and video games. The next term of the title is Preservation Society, and this isnt something one considers when thinking of Godzilla now is it? This makes for a very intriguing prospect of apparently a group of individuals trying to preserve kaijus. One, why would we do that? Two, How would we even go about doing that? It’s safe to say I obviously picked up the book hoping to have all my questions answered, and while some of them were, others were left unsatisfied. But that’s the thing about science fiction. It’s fiction. There’s no real reason for everything to make sense, as much as we would love it to.

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TL;DR – A sci-fi thriller (?) which has everything from a pandemic, large monsters, shady goverment organisations, and an out-of-job-trying-very-hard-to-be-funny dude who ends up saving the world. Meh. Listen to the audiobook instead.

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We follow Jamie as he struggles to cope with finding a job during the COVID-19 pandemic after being let go by his former employer. While working as a food delivery rider he reconnects with an old friend who offers him the opportunity to try out for the KPS of which very little is really known to our protagonist other than it being a very secretive animal rights NGO. Having nothing to lose, he proceeds to the interview, and while still a little confused , finds the prospect of a sizeable paycheck too hard to refuse. Even if it meant he will have to stay in a remote location in Greenland for months at a time.

Jamie and a bunch of very smart (yet all clueless as to the what their jobs actually entail) people from all over the world are all flown into a secret base on Greenland to find that it’s just a front for a top secret installation that resides in a pocket dimension between our Earth, and a parallel one where evolution took a turn resulting in the predominance of gigantic monsters whose growth are fueled by internal bio-nuclear reactors, therein throwing our square-cube law out of the window.

*takes deep breath* Phew. I know.

As these monsters essentially feed off nuclear energy, they can somehow sense the nuclear energy on our world across dimensions (when nuclear tests were held), and this causes them to come across into our world. Hello, Godzilla.

Right, but there’s more.

What follows is how the KPS (which the protagonist has learned stands for the Kaiju Preservation Society) are working to prevent the Kaijus from slipping into our real world by taking care of them in this extra dimensional pocket maintained and funded, in secret, by several countries all over the world. Obviously, not everyone is content with the relative state of equanimity and so there is a vying for power in the form of a kaiju kidnapping to harness the potential power from their internal bio-nuclear reactors.

Of course, because why not, right?

The rest is as any typical story goes so there’s little sense in saying more. The plot is fairly linear, easy to grasp, and at times forced to maintain the protagonist’s apparent humorous personality. This is definitely a one-time read for me. It’s not a bad book, but neither is it one that I’ll be willing to recommend. It could essentially count as a cozy sci-fi read but even then there are so many better books out there to scratch that itch (looking at you Becky Chambers’ books). The only reason one would pick it and proceed to read it is for the kaiju, so if anyone has an interest in monsters, pacific rim, godzilla then give it a go.

Rating: 3/5

P.S. The audiobook makes for a slightly better experience since Will Wheaton does a good job in bringing some of these characters to life. Maybe give that a go instead?

Links:

• Goodreads: The Kaiju Preservation Society
• Wikipedia: Godzilla
• Wikipedia: Square-cube Law