The funeral is attended by various dubious individuals who have a bizarre obsession with confirming Jake's death; one attendee, Tobias, even attempts to stab the corpse.

Charlie, Mathilda and the cats take refuge on Saint Genevieve, Jake's Caribbean island hideout in Grenada, powered by geothermal energy from an active volcano and guarded by intelligent dolphins.

Concluding that he is unsuited for a life of villainy, Charlie learns he was a stalking horse in a plot by Jake, his allegedly deceased ally Anton Dobrev, and Mathilda to dismantle the Convocation.

[6] Publishers Weekly calls the book a " clever, fast-paced thriller" that subverts classic supervillain tropes with equal measures of tongue-in-cheek humor and common sense.

She characterizes the book as "[c]ombining the sarcastic humor of Scalzi's Redshirts with an origin story for James Bond–like supervillains operating with the competence-porn-level efficiency and work ethic of Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots."

She concludes that "[r]eaders of humorous fantasy are sure to love Scalzi’s latest (after The Kaiju Preservation Society) as much as those cats; it’s also for those who enjoy seeing superhero stories folded, twisted, and mutilated and anyone wishing for a righteous villain lair surrounded by intelligent sharks [sic: dolphins].

"[8] Kirkus Reviews calls the book "one of many available stories about a good-hearted Everyman thrust into fantastical circumstances, struggling to survive as a fish out of water, and, while well executed for its type, the plot doesn't go anywhere that will surprise you."

The current work is fluffier and sillier than the previous novel and, indeed, many of Scalzi's other books, although there is the occasional jab about governments being in bed with unscrupulous corporate enterprises or the ways in which people can profit from human suffering."