47 pages • 1 hour read
John ScalziA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
When Jamie, Satie, and Kahurangi reach the site, Kahurangi offers Jamie a bottle of pheromones that will make them smell like a kaiju so other creatures ignore them. They find the destroyed instruments and replace them with new ones. Jamie sees a flash at Bella’s former location but nobody else does. Jamie notices one of the instrument packages has a bullet in it and finds a dead phone under a fallen tree.
Later, in the conference room, Jamie shows a video they found on the phone to the rest of Tanaka Base. The video shows Tom planting the instruments. He explains that the aerostat and Chopper One were hit and that soldiers with equipment were approaching Bella and firing at the crew. Later in the video, a soldier shoots at one of the creatures and interrogates Tom, who tries to reason with the soldier. The soldier shoots him offscreen, checking to see if anyone is watching, and creatures chase him away. Jamie shows another video from the phone, depicting barrel-like objects that Jamie suspects the kidnappers used to create a barrier around Bella and the eggs. The objects glow, and a flash appears. Bella, her eggs, and the objects vanish.
Jamie has trouble sleeping and tells their plant that things are not working. Niamh summons Jamie to the living room, where Kahurangi and Aparna are waiting. Aparna tells Jamie the group needs their advice. They must bring Bella back to Kaiju Earth tonight, or she will explode. Aparna explains that Kaiju Earth is hot and humid, but the main Earth is cold at this time of year. Bella and her eggs are freezing, along with the parasites supporting her. Niamh says the flash Jamie saw indicates that Bella’s nuclear reactor is starting to fail, and the dimensional barrier is thinning. Jamie suggests going to the perimeter and using it to reach Bella. With this plan, the team risks being cornered by the hostile soldiers or getting in trouble with KPS leadership. Ultimately, however, deciding they must prevent Bella from exploding and killing thousands of people, they prepare to get her back. Jamie enlists Satie to give them a ride to the barrier.
The site is glowing when Jamie, Satie, Aparna, Niamh, and Kahurangi arrive with emergency supplies, pheromone canisters, and weapons. Satie agrees to wait until they get through. Once they all get through the perimeter, he will return to Tanaka Base and tell leadership about the plan. Jamie tells Satie to warn Tanaka Base that Bella may be angry when she gets back. On the ground, the group applies kaiju pheromone, and Kahurangi distributes uranium pellets to get them through the barrier. When the group fist bumps each other, the perimeter lights up and sends them through the barrier to their own Earth’s Canada. Kahurangi delights that his plan worked, but Niamh explains that Bella’s nuclear reactor brought them there; the fuel is still some distance away. A man appears and asks who they are.
Niamh offers to show their ID and stuns the man with their electric baton, surprising the others. Niamh justifies this act by saying that the man likely does not care about the group’s lives. The group agrees to leave him by a tree and spray him with kaiju pheromone. Jamie takes his phone and finds a Wi-Fi connection and secret files, which they transfer before the group leaves. One file is a document about a “trans-dimensional portal,” which Jamie notes has a poor design. The group speculates on the possibility of negotiating with the kidnappers to prevent Bella from exploding, though they are skeptical this would work. They encounter the human encampment and the generator building, near Bella. When Bella screams and releases a beam of nuclear energy, the KPS group runs to the generator building and secures the door. Inside, they prepare a laptop to discharge the capacitors, but before they can complete the act, a man appears outside the door and tells them to open the door or be tear-gassed. Five men appear, and one asks who stunned the soldier, named Dave. Niamh raises their hand. Rob Sanders appears.
Sanders says he was going to feed the group to the kaiju parasites but offers to give them a painless death. He asks how they got there, and Jamie shows him the used uranium fuel pellets. Aparna says they were desperate to get there because keeping Bella on this Earth is dangerous for her and everyone else. Sanders says her explosion would destroy the evidence of his crime. He delights in the idea that China might be blamed for a nuclear explosion in Canada, causing martial law in the United States. Sanders explains that his USB key is required to discharge the capacitors. His family had been wanting to thin the barrier with a nuclear explosion for years. His family has been involved with nuclear energy for decades, planning to grow nuclear reactors. Sanders wants to know how the kaiju produce them. He admits that his people took the aerostat and helicopter down on Kaiju Earth. Jamie reveals they saw Tom’s footage of his murder. The KPS and the Department of Energy will know. Sanders says the Trump administration will not care and might even reward him. He and his people will study the kaiju and nobody will know.
Kahurangi tries and fails to bluff Sanders into postponing their deaths, but Sanders calls the bluff. Kahurangi says a heartful goodbye to his companions and activates a pheromone bomb that makes the kaiju aggressive. Everyone in the room prepares to flee as they hear Bella’s scream and see her parasites approach. Jamie takes the opportunity to pull the USB key off Sanders’s neck.
The kaiju parasites attack the people at the encampment, and Jamie sees Sanders looking for the USB key. Jamie runs toward Bella and Sanders tries to shoot them, demanding his key back. Jamie throws dirt and a rock at him, but injures their ankle and falls. Bella stands over them, staring. Sanders threatens to shoot Jamie, who tells him not to run. Bella is tired and out of her environment. Jamie realizes she will not eat or attack them and talks sympathetically to her, annoying Sanders. Jamie chastises him for taking a kaiju from her environment and harming the world for profit. Sanders says he will send Bella back to Kaiju Earth and give Jamie money if they return the key. As Sanders prepares to shoot them, a parasite attacks and kills him.
Chopper Two comes through the barrier and Bella tries to approach it, unfurling her wings and taking flight. Jamie and the rest of the KPS group reconvene. Aparna says the time to Bella’s explosion is a little over 20 minutes. The group uses the USB key to discharge the capacitors so they can send Bella and her eggs back to Kaiju Earth. Satie gets Bella’s attention, and she chases the helicopter. Bella and her eggs disappear.
Honda Base’s gateway is down because Bella destroyed much of the jungle in a rage before laying more eggs and brooding again. Jamie and the other KPS members do not return to Kaiju Earth immediately, staying in a hotel in St. John’s. KPS holds an investigation via Zoom meetings with the group, who explain what happened. Dave, the soldier Niamh stunned, backs up the group’s story and forgives Niamh. KPS reports the incident as a radio interferometry project gone wrong, and the Sanders family is investigated for fraud.
After Jamie and the others return, everyone at Tanaka Base has a party. The rest of Jamie’s tour is uneventful and in March, they leave with the rest of Gold Team. Jamie leaves a letter for their replacement, telling them about their plant, the bonds and friendships they formed at KPS, and their hope that their replacement will care for the plant and that they will meet someday. Jamie parts with their friends, who return to their homes.
At their apartment, Jamie reunites with Brent and Laertes and learns that Qanisha Williams is a füdmüd deliverator. She apologizes to Jamie, who forgives her. Qanisha explains she was fired after the buyout and becoming a deliverator must be her punishment. Jamie says the problem was “bad people and bad luck” (258). Jamie presents Qanisha with a KPS business card, and they part ways.
Chapters 22-28 contain the climax and resolution of the novel. The section’s reveal of Sanders as the person responsible for stealing Bella and the deaths of Tom and the replanting crew follows the science fiction trope of wealthy billionaires or corporate entities as antagonists. Scalzi presents corruption and monetary greed as evils that endanger the world and its life forms, illustrating theme of Humans’ Impact on Ecosystems with Sanders’s disregard for kaiju, human, or environmental safety. As an archetypal greedy, power-hungry science fiction villain, Sanders is manipulative and content to hurt innocent people and creatures as long as he gains money and power from it. Sanders’s actions not only endanger and disrupt the ecosystem on Kaiju Earth by taking the only female of the species and her eggs, but also endanger the main Earth’s ecosystems. His willingness to allow Bella to explode and delight at the potential nuclear and political fallout illustrate how careless and greedy humans can cause long-lasting damage. Sanders’s brutality ends in poetic justice when one of the creatures he wants to exploit attacks him, suggesting that attitudes like his ultimately destroy the people who promote them. This section also revives the motif question of “Who are the monsters?” Jamie recalls joking about the question with Tom, who Sanders’s team killed. Now, Jamie understands that the implication behind the question is true: The novel heavily implies that humans like Sanders are the real monsters, who wish to exploit the natural world for profit in a highly unsustainable and unethical manner.
This section explores The Importance of Conservation and Environmental Stewardship by connecting Bella’s fate to that of the people in the main Earth’s Labrador: If Bella explodes, thousands of people will also die. In explicitly connecting their fates, Scalzi emphasizes the effects that species extinctions and environmental disasters have on human beings. The kaiju function in this section as a symbol of the power and danger of nature and nuclear energy, as well as humanity’s desire to control them. Scalzi’s sympathetic presentation of the kaiju follows modern science fiction convention as well. Over the course of the novel, the author builds empathy and wonder for the kaiju, with the new KPS members learning to see Bella as a creature who wants to survive, not a monster or weapon. Jamie’s character arc illustrates this change. For example, when Bella stands over Jamie at Sanders’s camp, they realize Bella only wants to return home, survive, and brood. This allows Jamie to sympathize with Bella and rebuke Sanders for his disregard for the kaiju and other people. The author also uses Jamie’s empathy for Bella and the other creatures from Kaiju Earth to illustrate the relationships possible when humans respect other species. Jamie’s overall understanding of and connection to the world deepens due to their relationship with the kaiju. The plant Jamie’s predecessor left for them reappears in this section as a symbol of the new understanding of the natural world Jamie cultivated during their deployment. Jamie confides their worries to the plant, symbolizing the trust and appreciation they have developed since joining the KPS. Jamie’s letter about the plant to their replacement suggests a lasting commitment to conservation and the KPS community and a willingness to pass on what they learned on Kaiju Earth.
The climax also illustrates Scalzi’s emphasis on Teamwork and Community in the Face of Global Catastrophe. In this section, the author shows both the dangers inherent in ignoring community concerns and the power that comes from teamwork and community concern. With Sanders’s consistent assertion that he does not care who his plan hurts, Scalzi suggests that global catastrophe is the inevitable consequence of a lack of empathy. On the other hand, Gold Team works together to fulfill their duty and protect other people. When Jamie reminds Gold Team that they promised to protect the kaiju, they appeal to the sense of purpose that binds the team together, despite their individual fears and differences. Though they have doubts that their plan will work, they trust each other and choose to risk capture and death for the greater good. Their teamwork, skills, and empathy allow them to defeat Sanders, save Bella, and escape alive.