Paperclip by Seb Doubinsky

i​       Back to New Babylon and the intriguingly surreal world of Seb Doubinsky’s imaginary city states of a neodystopian future. I’ve actually only read one of these books, the Paperclip’s predecessor, the Invisible, and that alone was enough to merit further interest, so when the publisher offered me a free copy of this book to review I was all for it. The good thing about this series is that while all the books are interconnected, they seem to be perfectly readable as standalones.  Each one tells its own story. And each one does it very succinctly, this book only took 100 minutes or so to get through and was well worth a read.
     Trivia time… Operation Paperclip was a secret US intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former nazi Deutschland to the United States for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945 and 1959. That’s just so you don’t think this is a novel about office supplies.
     In the story, a grandchild of one of these nazis named Klaus Wagner dreams Elon Musky dreams about rescuing mankind by taking them to space. Kurt is your prototypical megalomaniac who echoed his granddaddy politics in some quietly disturbing ways, though seems to be completely unaware of it. Klaus, understandably, rubs many people (his security detail, a famous actress one night stand, etc.) the wrong way, whether they are directly in his life or just know of him, so he ends up being a target of various, variously amusing assassination plots. There’s also a charmingly sentient feathered character for some offbeat commentary. And that’s basically it, an entertaining and clever story, subtly (and darkly) humorous with just the right kind of wacky that the author does so expertly.
     All in all, a quick fun read. I enjoyed it very much and would definitely read other books in the series. Might the publisher be so kind as to…? Anyway. This book…just the right kind of weird. Recommended.