The Nemesis Saga is widely considered by fans as the pinnacle of Kaiju literature, coined by the author Jeremy Robinson as “Kaiju Thriller”. Every kaiju novel since, including the books written by the author himself, has been compared to the five-book saga, either justly or unjustly. What started as a Greek tragedy of a murdered little girl being transformed into a giant monster became the story of a growing family standing together to face a universal evil. As you could guess from the almost 10-page review I made of the first book (as well as my old reviews from when I was a kid), I thought of it very highly. After Project Legion, however, Nemesis had taken a back seat so other books could be made. For the past couple of years, Robinson had crafted the Infinite Timeline, a multiverse series of multiple books all interconnected somehow dubbed by fans as the “RobinsonVerse”. I haven’t read the books, but I am interested in checking them out even though I’m not a huge fan of multiverse crossover stories but that’s something for another time.
From the interview Robinson had on our site, he had revealed during the timeline there had been an Artificial intelligence who had a thing for creating different realities…weird but hey we had David in Prometheus and Alien Covenant trying to create Xenomorphs so why not an AI creating universes? Anyway, Robinson goes on to explain one of the universes the AI had made was her take on Nemesis from the old universe she originated from. In real life, Robinson had been wanting to reboot Nemesis for quite some time and with the new TV show in development at the time of this writing, it’s now time for Nemesis’s grand return.
Since the end of the last book of the original Saga, I have been eagerly waiting for this day to come. I’ve wondered for years about how the next book would look like, what new Kaiju Nemesis will have to face, would it be a direct continuation or all new everything. I almost can’t believe this is happening, honestly. For years I’ve been waiting for a new Nemesis book until eventually I just moved onto other things. I did keep an eye out for other Robinson books that came out, from great novels like Unity, the Hunger Trilogy, NPC, and some of the older stuff like Second World, to ones that I thought were just mid-tier at best, like Tether. It was when I took a look at Twitter to find, to my shock and excitement, Robinson had answered to a fan’s tweet that Nemesis was coming back in a brand-new reboot novel. You could imagine how happy I was.
Now before we get into the nitty-gritty of the book, there are a few things we need to cover. For starters, this is a reboot of the universe Nemesis is in, but not a complete reboot of the first book. Much like many of Godzilla’s movies and eras, this is a new take on the character as it should be as this will be the first Reiwa Era Nemesis. However certain events will be mentioned from the first book, with some differences to the continuity. As such, it’s recommended by the author that you don’t necessarily need to read the first book to enjoy this one, this was made with the intention to be enjoyed by old fans like me, and newcomers who want to read it.
Secondly, you may have noticed that the name of the review is different, that I’m calling this book “Shin Nemesis” instead of just Nemesis. My reasoning is simple: the title of the book is…a bit overused. Now don’t get me wrong, Nemesis is a great name with multiple meanings and connotations. The problem is it’s a very common name to use, like a crap ton common. You just look up the word “Nemesis” and you’ll get millions of things related to it. Video games, movies, characters, ships, books. Just looking up Nemesis the book and I have found about 18 different titles before I landed on Jeremy Robinson’s novel. To his credit, though, he did have another title for the book based on the heavy metal song he wrote called Wages of Sin, which sounds ok to me but not something I’d use for the big reboot of a famous character. So, I do this thing with existing properties and give them made up fan names. I have no idea why I do it, it just makes me happy. A big example of this that comes to my mind would be Nemesis from Rooster Teeth’s Gen: LOCK, who I have forever dubbed Gen: KILLER for the above-mentioned reasoning.
The Japanese word “Shin” is used for modern retelling of classic tokusatsu, popularized by Shin Godzilla, later used for Shin Ultraman and Shin Kamen Rider. There are many meanings behind this word but the one I’ve chosen to represent is “new”. This is a new Nemesis, this is a new take on her mythos, and of course this is a new Era for her. I could have just gone with a “return of” for the title of this book like Nemesis Returns or Nemesis Raids Again or something like that and there is another name I actually call this book but that’s for later. For the most part though I decided to use Shin because it could not be more appropriate. And if people disagree with me, say I’m only piggybacking on a meme name, go ahead. My opinions are my own and you don’t have to necessarily agree with me.
How will Shin Nemesis look in the Reiwa Era? Will this be the triumphant return we’ve been waiting for? Let’s find out!
TO BE CONTINUED ON PAGE 2.
Table of Contents
Page 1: Intro
Page 2: Story Overview
Page 3: Character Overview, Final Thoughts
