Review by Joel Kreissman

Have you ever had the uncanny feeling that you’ve been someplace before? Met someone new and found them strangely familiar? That’s what happens to Nate and Dan, the beagle and fruit bat deuteragonists of Two Souls of Fangcrest Manor, written by Domus Vocis and illustrated by Fruitz. Both characters have been having strange dreams of living in the Victorian era as a nobleman and his servant engaged in a forbidden romance. When they meet for the first time in the present day, at the estate that appeared in their dreams, they start to suspect that something paranormal might be going on.

Dan and Nate don’t really have an antagonist to confront until the very end. Their past lives, Daivik and John, do in the form of John’s status-conscious mother and brother, but they’re long dead in the present day. This isn’t a bad thing, per se--an engrossing story can be written without a conflict or antagonist--but it might throw some readers off.

I appreciated the worldbuilding involved in writing a world almost like the real world but with furries. There are nods to the logistics required to accommodate bats, flying licenses are treated like driver’s licenses for winged species, and hotels have reinforced rafters where bats can hang upside-down. Also, it seems there was some minor political divergence from the timeline in the past couple centuries, as places in Britain have the same names but Dan mentions a city in America called “Las Estrellas” that is implied to be equivalent to Los Angeles.

Admittedly, I haven’t read too many “reincarnation romance” stories, but Fangcrest Manor addresses an issue that the others I’ve seen ignored, whether being romantically entangled in their past lives means that they should be in a relationship in their present lives or if they have a choice.

I thought it a little odd that Dan took a while to arrive at reincarnation as an explanation, while Nate was suggesting aliens messing with their memories or parallel universes, considering that he’s Indian-American. Even if his family are not particularly devout, reincarnation is a mainstream belief in India, and his past life explains the concept to his lover in one of their flashbacks. Yet Dan acts like it’s a weird New Age idea.

I noticed a bit of a socioeconomic reversal between the main characters’ past and present lives. On top of that, it is noted that the difference in social status between John and Davy was almost as scandalous as their gender in Victorian times, but is almost a non-issue in the present. Davy and John wished they could be born again in a world where they would be accepted. While much of the world has changed a lot on that front since the nineteenth century this reminded me that many queer people still live in fear of their community or their government, and for good reasons. Dan and Nate are not shown experiencing homophobia in the story, aside from the aforementioned ghost, but are still cautious about revealing themselves as gay to strangers. I don’t know if the current wave of homophobia in America and Europe is happening in Dan and Nate’s world, but one can only hope we all live through it.

In all, Two Souls of Fangcrest Manor is quite enjoyable. Two awkward men caught in a romance that transcends death itself, yet are relatable and fun, with good worldbuilding to boot. It’s a good read.

Review by Sofox

I can't review The Long Slumber by P.C. Hatter because it's not a book in its own right: it is a full plot retelling of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel The Big Sleep.

I'm not hugely into that era of detective novels, but by chance I'd read The Big Sleep a while back. In reading The Long Slumber, the similarities hit right from the first page. After a few pages I looked back at the title on the cover and finally made the connection. As I continued I confirmed this wasn't merely a similar setup, but followed the plot of the original work step by step, scene by scene. LA detective goes into a rich guy's mansion who has two chaotic daughters (cheetahs in this version). He takes on a blackmail case and soon finds a bookshop that's a front for a porno library. He gets in deeper, guns get pointed at him, he points guns at other people, people die, questions arise about some of the deaths, and a missing person case hangs over everything. The only core differences between the two books is that the characters names are different and in this version everyone is given an animal species. With a much lower word count and being physically fairly thin, The Long Slumber feels like an abridged retelling.

Now, since The Long Slumber has "Poached Parody" right on the cover, I have to tackle the question of whether this is a parody or not. Unless you consider the simple act of swapping out human characters for animals to be a parody, or that the main character's new name sounds kinda like "Anorak," then I'm going to have to answer the question, "No". A parody has to do something with the source material that sets it apart, let you know the authors view of the original work, and usually mock it in some absurd way. Ultimately The Long Slumber doesn't really do any of this and more follows in the same footsteps rather take a different path for a new perspective.

There's no new angle, no new tone, no changes to the plot, no replacing the main character with one who's the polar opposite (like when The Producers (1967) had Hitler played by a hippie). Everything is the same from the pace, sequence of events, characters, plot revelations and general atmosphere its trying to evoke. Even a lose plot thread from the original book (that gave the makers of the 1946 film a bit of a hiccup) is ported over, showing that everything is copied over uncritically. There's no sense that the author really processed the source material, just changed names and added species. The rest is rewriting it in a way that would have a college professor screaming at their student if they'd turned it in as their own work.

And that's why it's not a parody. It doesn't change anything so that it can mock it or make fun of the source material. It's like watching an hour long TV movie that adapts the work in a more condensed form. Even the Wishbone TV series, with its gimmick of retelling a piece of classic literature with one of the roles played by a dog, analysed the material well enough to create a modern day story to compare the classic work to and try to share their enthusiasm about the original work with the audience.

With parody you need to make at least one fundamental change that leads to finding new ways to view the material. Vegemorphs was Animorphs except they turned into vegetables rather than animals, making things even more absurd. MegasXLR decided an epic mecha robot cartoon would be more fun if the robot's head was replaced with a muscle car driven by two slacker teens from New Jersey, making its fantastical premise contrast comically with a mundane urban setting (one episode has them have to fight robots just so they can return a rented VHS tape before incurring late fees). Pyst had the island of Myst depicted as a trashed tourist resort, imagining that the millions of people who had virtually visited the island by playing Myst had instead physically visited a real location and collectively left their mark. The Big Lebowski was inspired by Chandler's works also, but starred laid back slacker who got pushed around by other people's plans, rather than a stern detective who proactively moved things forward. The fact he wasn't even trying to make things happen made all the surreal stuff even more absurd with a running gag about him trying to find a way to lock his door so crazy people with strange agendas would stop coming through it and messing him around.

It's not enough to take a story and change the characters to animal people to make it a parody, especially if there isn't any knock on effect that fundamentally changes how you view the piece. Also, because the author sticks so close to the source material it's a lot harder to figure out how the author feels about the original work, whether they love it, hate it or just want to have fun with it. Figuring out how the author feels about something is one of the key reasons you read a book to begin with, to hear their voice, feel what they feel. This is incredibly hard to do with The Long Slumber because because anything you feel or read is more likely to come from Chandler than the author.

I can't review this book as a parody because it simply isn't one. I can't review this book on its own terms because it isn't a book on its own terms. So in order review this book, I have to start by reviewing The Big Sleep.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the The Big Sleep. The Long Slumber being much shorter is actually a plus in my view. Both star a detective who moves around, covers ground that includes the wealthy and the seedy, does questionable things, and gets involved with guns a lot while managing to stay on top of things both in terms of fights and the legal/political complications. Sometimes his moral compass is solid, other times it's questionable. We're not always kept updated with what he's thinking, and there's barely any insight into his emotion.

That was actually my biggest issue with the book. The main character feels more like a plot device than a character. He does stuff and we're not always sure why. To be fair, his decisive nature keeps things interesting, as does his tendency to dive into precarious situations without backup, but the emotional repercussions he would have from most of what he's involved with are either unexplored or just not there. I'm not sure if this is because this generation of men were far more emotionally repressed or he was just an underdeveloped character. There's also some shifts in the plot and his motivation which threw me off a bit, possibly an artefact from when The Big Sleep was actually two separate short stories.

Aside from that, it's aged badly in a few ways. Firstly, the fact we're meant to be shocked by a covert pornography library. It honestly seems like a well run business with returning clientele and the efforts of the narrative to give it a seedy, dirty, criminal element just seem forced. The Long Slumber, being written in a more modern era, downplays the shock element without changing anything.

The other is its sexism element. I'm not here to give you a lecture of feminism, but the underlying message of "if men do bad things, they should be shot; if women do bad things, they should get away with it" is one of the things that really disgusted me about the original book. The Long Slumber, once again, downplays this without changing anything.

In terms of the positives. It does move forward at a nice clip, is fairly dramatic, nice ambience of mid 1900s LA and has nice descriptions. The main character seems to have missed his calling as an interior designer with some of his critiques of places like the rich man's mansion, and one of my favourite descriptions in the book (explaining how two different shades of white clashed) doesn't make the leap to The Long Slumber (simply described as "tundra white"). I'm neutral on the mood and atmosphere, something that's a big part of books and films of this genre. I thought it was nice but not compelling. I did enjoy reading the book and following the detective on his journey through the various sights of LA of the time. It's a fine book, but the dated elements soured me on it, especially since I had such raised expectations for such a famous book. I've read more recent crime books that have grabbed me far more (The Black Echo by Michael Connelly or Ratking by Michael Dibdin for example), but then maybe they're building on a legacy that novels such as The Big Sleep helped establish.

So what can I say about The Long Slumber that I didn't just say about The Big Sleep? With its shorter page count, descriptions don't feel as involved, mood isn't as well established, and there's more emphasis on the functional actions. It keeps the (by now) period setting though I could swear I saw some contemporary slang slip in. I've already mentioned how the modern perspective smooths out some dated elements while keeping them in there. In terms of how I enjoyed it I do have to mention that the ending and most of the plot was spoiled for me since I'd read the original. However I did have good times reading it, with me enjoying parts of the ride, though it was hard to tell if it was the author's efforts or they were just successfully channelling the original book. The fact it had been some time since I'd read The Big Sleep also made it a bit harder to distinguish.

In terms of the animal characters... honestly, a decent job. Having the characters represented by animals made them stand out more than the original work, and good species choices were across the board. One character gets a species so obscure that there's some humorous dialogue explaining what this species actually looks like (I guess that counts as an additional joke, but still not enough to make it a parody). Descriptions like a cheetah baring her claws and so on do play up the anthropomorphic element, along with two people being the same species opening up the question of whether they are related. It's cute, and a fun way to spice up the story, making the scenes fun to imagine. They're the only part of the book that feels created by the author rather than taken from Chandler.

When I first came across The Long Slumber, it was at the author's table at Anthrocon. It was stacked with many other books of under the Poached Parody label, divided into about three series. Despite being relatively thin, I still wondered how an single author could write so many books. Having read The Long Slumber, I think I have a clue.

The Long Slumber is the first in a series of six starring Lucius Anoraq. In comparison, Big Sleep was the first novel starring Philip Marlowe, who was the protagonist in six novels. If you compare the titles of both series of books, a pattern emerges: Farewell, My Lovely/Goodbye Gorgeous; The High Window/The Lofty Perch; The Lady in the Lake/The Female in the Water; The Little Sister/The Wee Sibling; The Long Goodbye/The Lengthy Farewell; Playback/Recap. It's clear one is very much derived from the other. There may never be another Lucius Anoraq because there simply isn't another full length completed Philip Marlowe novel, not by Chandler at least. That's the problem with following source material too closely, you're at its mercy.

The author has two other series too. One, with protagonist Kaiser Wrench, has 13 books in it. The titles here seem to match the 13 Mike Hammer books written by Mickey Spillane in perfect order (My Gun Is Quick/My Claws are Quick; Kiss Me, Deadly/Pet Me Fatal etc.). The author also has a series of five books by the name The Lizard Fifth. The titles of this series seem to compare to those of the five novels Dashiell Hammett wrote (eg. The Maltese Falcon/The Persian Penguin).

I do want to mention I do like the cover art for all these books, a nice furry pulpy noir style. The artist is Sara "Caribou" Miles (also the artist of Halfway Hotel) and prints of the cover art are available on her website.

I can't speak of the books without reading them, but if they're like The Long Slumber then the pattern is clear: Take existing well regarded hard boiled detective fiction and rewrite it with animal characters, likely with minimal changes in plot or characters.

So if you want a hit of streamlined noir classics with a furry twist, I guess you now know where to look. For me, though, I prefer to seek out more original furry fiction, ones that express the views of the author, their thoughts and passions, and don't just channel those of another. Writing a story is a challenge, and it's how different authors handle the challenge that you really get a sense of what they're about. Not to mention that the question of whether the furry elements are a vital element to the story is one that will be decided by the author, not something that's predetermined by the fact that it's an adaption.

Ultimately, The Long Slumber is a slightly altered shadow of a much more influential work. If that's your thing, go for it, but by my attention tends to be drawn more to the things that cast a shadow rather than the shadow itself.

Review by Joel Kreissman

Virtus Draconis: Blood Price is Edi Alvarez’s first novel, set in a “science fantasy” world populated by humans and “incomplete” anthropomorphic animals. When princess Meredith of the highly conservative and religious kingdom of Shaddai attempts to start a crusade against their more progressive neighbors, mercenary adopted brothers Claude (dragon) and Mordred (wolf) of the Eon Group are hired by the president of Anthropia to warn other countries and hunt down Shaddai agents. Soon enough, they realize that they don’t need to look very hard, as Meredith makes them her primary targets. After the first attack by Shaddai forces they are joined by Anna, a human nomad who undergoes a dangerous forbidden ritual to make a pact with a spirit and become a “mystic” and/or prophet with immense magical powers, as well as transforming into an incomplete dragon.

Blood Price is a very fast-paced book, I was able to finish reading it in a couple days as I kept coming back to it to read what happened next. It’s an exciting adventure that seems to be over too quickly. That said, I noticed some places that could use improvement, mostly in the way of worldbuilding. Very little is explained about the setting. For instance we are told that “incompletes” are almost completely human in genetics, with the apparent differences in species practically cosmetic, but we don’t know how incompletes come into being aside from side effects to highly dangerous rituals. That said, the action moves so quickly that you don’t have time to wonder about your worldbuilding questions until the end of the book. The central conflict of a conservative society of religious fanatics attacking progressives might be a tad blunt, but it’s a conflict that will be familiar to many furry readers. Religious conflicts can be complicated in any setting, if gods are distant and there’s no hard evidence of their existence, it can be easy to believe that their followers are delusional or power-mad; but if divinities can directly make their intentions clear through physical appearances or empowered followers, you start to wonder if the zealots might have a point or whether the gods are evil. In this story, the first time we see a character exert divine power is when Meredith appears to send a soldier who failed her to Hell, but then Anna and Claude get their own powers from a spirit whose divinity is somewhat ambiguous. It’s difficult to tell which side, if any, has any divine support here.

Overall Virtus Draconis: Blood Price is a fast-paced adventure that makes a good casual read. I have a few questions about the setting, which I would like to see answered in a sequel.

Review by Sofox

I found this book for sale at a convention booth. The person behind the desk (not the author) was so nice about my harsh review that I decided to buy Book Two and give it a chance. I want to say one thing right off the bat: this book has more dragons than the previous one. That was one of my criticisms of Book One, and it wasn't the only one which the sequel has improved upon.

If you haven't read Book One, it's quite possible to skip it. One of my criticisms of the Book One was how too little was spread over too many pages, almost like an extended prologue, and Book Two gives you the general gist of what happened. In any event, the rest of this review will probably contain spoilers for Book One.

Book Two continues where Book One left off, with Arten having arrived in the city of dragons with Stekin, trying to recover from the last minute climax at the end of the previous book. Two things are set up: Arten has to find her place in the city, having fled all she has ever known. Dragons feed off the magic of certain individual humans known as Sources, and Arten is one. Meanwhile, Stekin is having to resume his place as Kaz (king/emperor/benevolent dictator for life) of the city having been absent for 13 years.

Between the two storylines, Stekin's one is definitely more interesting. It touches on the fact that saving people just to have dragons feed off their magic might just be exploiting vulnerable people. Stekin looks into Dragons mistreating Sources, and there's shades of Detective Noir as he tries to find more about what's been going on in his absence and a bit of "seedy underbelly" going on as we learn of things going on in the city that aren't being addressed. We learn a bit more about dragon society and customs, even if some of it isn't foreshadowed enough before it becomes relevant, and see Stekin take action and try to anticipate problems, some of which were of his own making due to his absence. It's good stuff.

Arten's story is a real kick in the gut. She's constantly blamed and criticised and snubbed, but a lot of it feels artificial. The entire basis of this city is Sources arrive in from the network, just like Arten did, and are given to dragons for them to take care of for decades. A city that operates on this basis should have a fully formed structure for integrating the sources: magic training, psychological support, orientation, everything to make sure the Sources are in best possible condition to live a stable life for years while "feeding" their dragon. Arten gets none of this, it's unclear if any of the other sources did either, and it makes every slight or insult against Arten incredibly frustrating. Yes, a thirteen year old newcomer doesn't know the customs of the city, but why are you getting angry at her when every other arriving Source has the same issue and is usually older?

The Compound society feels like a closed minded parochial village that's been there for generations rather than a glorified refugee camp of people who've been traumatised from having to abandon their life and make a dangerous life threatening trek. There should be countless people who can instantly relate to Arten on a base level, or know how much Arten is at risk of death both from mental and magical issues. Instead, no, they just treat Arten as an uninvited guest. At one point, Arten is criticised for looking too boyish even though female sources changing their appearance to look male is an established survival technique for making their way through the network. None of the other Sources talk about their experiences going through the network or ask Arten about hers, there's no talk of what to do if a Source is on the verge on burning out (a scenario they should be equipped for), no support group or social worker equivalents, and there's zero narrative consideration given to the fact that the Sources arrived from all walks of life and would have hugely different viewpoints, issues and skills settling in (no rivalries, factions, different religions, etc.). The Compounds continually feel like a monoculture that's been built up over generations rather than one that's fed by a constant population churn. Most of its inhabitants feel flat and shallow, formed to give Arten a hard time rather than developed to exist in their own right and interacting with the same world Arten is.

So I found it hard to be on Arten's side when a lot of her hardships felt manufactured for the plot and at the expense of learning a genuine understanding of this unique setting. As the book progresses, Arten reacts mostly like the traumatised thirteen year old girl she is; getting frustrated, angry, doing her own thing, which of course leads to more people giving out to her unfairly and criticise her (again, the abuse parallels). While she does have her moments, she's reactive for most of the book, feeling more like a victim than a protagonist.

A lot of her story is also her relationship with Stekin, which feels uncomfortably close to a romcom plot of "they want to be together but things keep getting in the way." Obviously the vast age and power difference between the two make anything resembling a romance deeply unnerving, but more to the point I can't get invested in Stekin and Arten getting closer together when it's super clear that Stekin isn't very good for Arten. He genuinely cares for Arten but aside from a bit of support he really doesn't have the skills/understanding to make her life better. He's bad at teaching magic control and didn't even try while they were trekking, he's reticent with emotions when Arten clearly suffers severe emotional neglect, and he's not good at helping her socialise when one of her biggest issues is connecting with those around her. That's even ignoring the multiple instances he makes a mistake that screws Arten over (and in one instance, turns around and criticises Arten for it). It feels like the book is constantly trying to entice us with something that does not taste good. I will say that unlike the first book, there is something of a resolution to both main character's plots. Some things are left for future books, but it feels like a complete package.

Like Book One, it's all fluidly written and the moment to moment is done engagingly. However, I have issues with the descriptions. If something is "beside a cliff" does that mean it's at its base or peak? The Compound, one of the city's three sections, has three circles, but at one point I wasn't sure if the circles were concentric. It might have been better to just include a map.

Regarding the worldbuilding, all three sections of the city have three economic classes, and it wasn't as developed as it could've been. Dragons finding out they could feed off Sources somehow saved their entire race from the Sundering, but I never quite understood how since a dragon seems fully capable of surviving without a Source. Exactly why dragons have to restrict themselves to the city is another point I felt I wasn't clear on. And of course the big one: What even was the Sundering? I get that some of this may be held back for future books, but some of this history is vital for understanding the city and setting as it exists now and the stories taking place therein. To add insult to injury, Arten reads through a big book on Dragon history, but we get barely any titbits from it.

And now lets circle back to the dragons. There are lots of dragons, especially in Stekin's part of the book. I would have appreciated them described a bit more as sometimes it wasn't clear if they were in dragon or human form when they appeared, but there's still some good dragon action. Dragons sticking their heads through windows, dragons towering over humans, some mid air fights and flying scenes. There's even a bit of dragon intrigue with some parts of the story playing with the dragon tendency towards manipulation and greed. It's all perfectly dragony stuff.

Dragon Bound is a definite improvement on the first book. Character depth may still be weak, but there's more plot, more resolution, more worldbuilding and definitely more dragons. There's still room for improvement, of course, and I know the author will live up to his potential.

Review by Casimir Laski

While in this review, I will be focusing on two of his novels, what initially brought Michael H. Payne’s writing to my attention was a pair of short stories from the FurPlanet line of anthologies: “Emergency Maintenance,” featured in the science fiction collection The Furry Future, and “To Drive the Cold Winter Away,” from the cross-genre, adventure-focused Exploring New Places. Both showcase the author’s signature strengths, featuring richly constructed settings brimming with life of their own, thoroughly developed characters who, despite containing an authentic degree of complexity, always remain delightfully endearing and remarkably easy to root for, and graceful prose that never overstays its welcome.

(To briefly tangent, “Emergency Maintenance” is described in its introduction as being an entry in Payne’s still as-of-yet-unfinished anthology novel A Meadow in the Mist, a book that I would greatly love to see published.) But all of this is to say that, if anyone out there finds themselves enticed to give the two novels I will discuss here a read, I urge you not to stop at the bounds of Payne’s longer-form work.

The Blood Jaguar and Rat’s Reputation both take place in the same constructed setting, a world highly reminiscent of late-19^th- and early-20^th-Century works such as The Wind in the Willows or The Hollow Tree Snowed-In Book—and possessed of a great deal of the same rustic charm, albeit with modernized (and therefore broadened) cultural and geographic horizons. Payne’s animal characters inhabit the same middle ground of anthropomorphism as Grahame’s Ratty and Toad: not quite so limited as the physically realistic rabbits of Watership Down, and yet not quite as human as the cast of Beastars.

In The Blood Jaguar, we begin on the outskirts of the town of Ottersgate, following Bobcat, a former wanderer who has managed to put down tenuous roots, and has partially succeeded in escaping a reputation for delinquency and catnip addiction. After a surreal encounter with a terrifying figure from the myths he never before took seriously, Bobcat seeks out the help of his neighbor Skink, an erudite, if unadventurous lizard, and Fisher, the local community shaman.

The latter pair soon discern that the three, collectively, have drawn the attention of the Curials, the twelve deities who supposedly govern creation, and become entangled in the latest occurrence of a (capitally rendered) Cyclical Myth. Setting out to both stay ahead of the Blood Jaguar, the renegade 13^thCurial prophesized to unleash a devastating worldwide plague, as well as to determine what exactly it is that the gods have planned for them, the trio venture across the continent, braving forests and deserts, outwitting mercurial monarchs and conniving cultists—and, naturally, leaning more about themselves and each other in the process.

Bobcat serves as a well-executed, if not particularly groundbreaking, example of the reluctant hero archetype: a lazy, mildly hedonistic lay-about dragged into the limelight by the “call to adventure,” who is forced to gradually accept responsibility in pursuit of what forces beyond his control have decided is his destiny. The crafty, world-wise Fisher helps (and struggles) to provide him with guidance along the way, while the mild-mannered, academically inclined Skink is both thrilled and terrified to find himself living through stories he has thus far only been able to study from the comfort of his home. Their endearing, semi-dysfunctional three-way dynamic adds an additional layer of engagement to the immersive animal world and the author’s consistently high-quality prose.

Strange as this may sound, in some ways Payne’s approach reminds me of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, which—and this may be easy for contemporary audiences to forget, given the book’s place as one of the cornerstones of modern fantasy—was decidedly unorthodox for its time, being essentially a pastiche of Beowulfwith a timid, middleclass early-20^thCentury Englishman thrust into the protagonist’s role.

For as much as he draws on longstanding literary traditions and influences, be they the works of Kenneth Grahame or ancient myths from cultures around the world, Payne makes a conscious effort to add to the canon rather than merely retread old ground. The Blood Jaguar is both a classic, Campbellian “hero’s journey” tale, and simultaneously a reflection on the component pieces of that very narrative structure, on how the stories we tell shape us, and how our lives, in turn, shape them. Not particularly bright or clever, even by his own admission, Bobcat’s stumbling attempts to understand Fisher and Skink’s metatextual musings on the nature of storytelling, after finding themselves inhabiting such a tale, ultimately come together in a poignant, revelatory climax.

Rat’s Reputation, meanwhile, spans a much longer period of time—several decades, compared to its predecessor’s little over a month—and takes a much looser approach to plotting. The hero of this tale is Rat, also known as “Ratayo,” or simply “Tayo,” who was found alone as an infant in the wilderness, delivered into the care of a wandering squirrel caravan by one of the Curials. However, finding himself the constant target of ridicule and suspicion on account of his status as an outsider, he is soon handed over to one of the prominent mouse families of Ottersgate.

From here, readers follow the course of Rat’s life through the trials of adolescence and early adulthood, as he finds himself embroiled in juvenile rivalries and longstanding feuds, friendships and crushes, childish pranks and more weighty run-ins with the law—and while this does eventually entail some globe-trotting across the setting we were introduced to in The Blood Jaguar, Rat’s Reputation trades the looming threat of apocalypse for a far more subdued, introspective tale about belonging and identity.

At one and the same time, Payne draws more heavily on the style and tone of The Wind in the Willows while exploring the perspective of “outcast” species in a way that Grahame’s novels, with their simplistically villainous weasels and stoats, never bothered to. Rounding out the cast, all three of the heroes from the prior novel make appearances, helping greatly, though in very different ways, to shape the course of Rat’s journey. Here, the Fisher from The Blood Jaguar is simply Blaze, daughter of the current Ottersgate shaman, hungry for experience with the Curials; the younger Bobcat, still in the throes of addiction, is far more vindictive and prone to violence than the mellow character Rat helps him become. Skink, meanwhile, remains much the same, offering our protagonist much-needed companionship when his troubles with his adoptive community drive him into semi-self-imposed exile in the surrounding woods.

With its focus on community and belonging comes an expansive cast of characters, allowing Payne to play to another of his strengths, for with the inhabitants of Ottersgate, the author captures the spirit of small-town solidarity in all its forms: from the hospitable and supportive to the insular and provincial. One would be hard-pressed not to grow attached to Raymon, the elderly head of the Nibbler clan who advocates for Rat’s adoption, or Kily, a young mouse in his newfound family, with whom childhood friendship eventually blossoms into an endearing romance. But even those who most frequently clash with Rat nonetheless come across as authentically realized individuals, from the scheming Aunt Mileen, determined to usurp Raymon’s role and correct what she sees as the errors of his stewardship of their clan, to Corin Spinner, the entitled, but ultimately good-hearted, daughter of their family’s rivals. A personal favorite is Officer Hawk, one of the chief constables of the town: initially highly prejudiced and presented as rather one-dimensional, the gruff raptor’s relationship with the protagonist gradually thaws as the two come to properly know one another.

Additionally, in Rat’s Reputation, Payne doubles down on the metatextual elements of the novel’s precursor. Over the course of his life, Rat finds himself the subject of a great deal of stories, often (but not always) drawn from the truth, then enlivened with exaggerations for good or ill. This eventually makes him into a sort of Reynardian trickster character, derided as a crude, barbarous villain by certain residents of Ottersgate, and lauded by others as a sly rascal with a heart of gold. Excerpts from these tales, as well as poems and even the occasional academic (or pseudo-academic) work on Rat’s life, serve as epigraphs before each chapter, giving further insight into how our protagonist is viewed by the various communities that he never seems to fit in with—and further exploring the nature and impact of storytelling as an artform, and its central place in culture.

As I alluded to earlier, Rat’s Reputationis far more character-driven and far less narratively focused than The Blood Jaguar, with the five sections, titled “Rebirth,” “Raising,” “Roaming,” “Reckoning,” and “Resolution,” often serving more as loose collections of chronologically occurring vignettes—and yet, while both novels are certainly well worth the read, I found Rat’s journey of personal growth, and his search for a community where he can finally belong, to be the more moving of the two tales. However, it should be noted that, by introducing both the setting and several important figures in Rat’s life, the first novel lays important groundwork for its successor, even if both remain standalone stories inhabiting the same wider world. Honoring the legacy of The Wind in the Willows while adding his own unique blend of charm and wit, Payne’s delightful little duology serves as a welcome addition to the anthropomorphic canon.

Review by Joel Kreissman

Mage, the third novel of R.A. Meenan’s Zyearth Chronicles series, starts in the year 2039 on an alternate Earth inhabited by both humans and animal-like aliens called zyfaunos, including a spine-bearing species called “quilars.” In the prior two novels a small, hidden island inhabited by quilars with a unique form of magic made contact with Zyearth, their species’ lost homeworld, but most of Earth remains unaware of Zyearth’s existence. Instead of the established cast, this novel introduces two new main characters: Leah Nealia, a feline historian and healer from Zyearth who can sense one’s entire medical history with a touch; and Zeke Brightclaw, a quilar test pilot from Earth facing a traumatic past and his own unknown heritage. Shortly after the two meet by chance, an unexpected magical event sends the two of them back in time to 2029, during a devastating war called the War of Eons. Now Zeke and Leah must face their demons and save their future.

Leah and Zeke together make an interesting contrast. They’re both broken in their own ways. Leah, because her privacy-invading power makes her a social pariah on Zyearth, while Zeke suffers PTSD from already fighting in the War of Eons once and returning to the war has reopened those wounds afresh. Zeke pushes people away because he’s both afraid of losing them and of being exploited, while Leah is afraid of rejection, but they’ve wound up stuck together thanks to magic. I also thought it was interesting how Leah refers to her brain as “the thought factory” when her anxiety acts up, it seemed a good metaphor for how one’s thoughts can run away as you ruminate on something. Given my own anxieties I was easily able to sympathize with Leah’s anxiety, and while I have no direct experience with PTSD I thought Zeke was a good portrayal based on what I’ve heard.

Much like the prior two novels, their differing cultural backgrounds provide a pair of sounding boards for worldbuilding. Zeke’s war-torn Earth has hints of familiarity to the readers, but ultimately is as alien as Leah’s Zyearth. There’s racism and institutional corruption that some readers will find uncomfortably familiar, but there’s also aliens and magic introducing many differences from the real world both in the open and behind the scenes. Given the state of the world in this book, the reader is inclined to agree with Zeke’s cynicism most of the time. Fortunately, Leah’s optimism is validated on occasion.

Appropriate for a book titled “Mage” we get a look at four different gem-based magic systems. They’re not “balanced” against one another in the slightest, but that’s only necessary in game settings. Some have drawbacks, such as Wishing Dust shortening life expectancy, while others do not have obvious downsides, like the Athanatos Ei-Ei Jewels that make the user near-immortal. Zyearth Lexi Gems and Vanguard Continuum Stones users can live for centuries but not as long as Ei-Ei users. In addition Ei-Ei Jewels allow one to use every type of elemental magic while Lexi and Continuum users are specialized in one or two elements and Wish Dusters have a single very powerful but very specific power. Related, we finally get some information on other inhabited planets besides Earth and Zyearth, though largely confirmation that they exist.

Time travel plots are tricky, especially where stable time loops are involved, but one character is actively trying to change the past. Once it’s shown that the past is fixed it’s hard to set stakes for the heroes’ actions. If the course of history says that they win, it’s difficult to get across the risks of them losing. This book just barely manages to pull that off, by virtue of the villain being just powerful enough to scare the mysterious figure charged with maintaining the timeline. The moral issues with time travel, specifically making sure that bad things happen in order to prevent worse things, is brought up but not really contested. It seems like the characters knew that they had no choice but to let the terrible things happen and were just complaining about having to do it.

Overall, Mage is an exciting new expansion to the series with new characters that can be entered into without reading the previous books, though I’d still recommend them.

Review by Sofox

This ROAR anthology, edited by Ian Madison Keller, is made up of fifteen stories, all on the theme of innovation. Before reviewing the stories, I must point out I'm not super keen on the cover art by Dante. It's simplistic, doesn't stimulate the curiosity, it's a little unclear on what's going on and I don't think it conveys the theme of the anthology very well. When I think of good furry anthology covers I think of the "Dogs of War" and "Dogs of War II: Aftermath" cover art by Teagan Gavet. Not only is it detailed and expressive, but if you place the two books beside each other, you can clearly see how the theme of the two anthologies are similar, yet evolve drastically from one book to the next. It's practically telling a story. It's a lot harder to see what the theme of ROAR 11 is from the cover aside from "cute otter and octopus."

The Stories

Draught Horse by Huskyteer

Taking home the trophy for "I came up with a pun and turned it into a story" we see a horse, Magnus, whose job is to draw technical drawings while his father works at a canal. There's a very nice "early 1900s" vibe to this story with changing technology meaning some jobs (like that of the father) are less relevant, while others (like that of the son) are on the increase. The story is themed around Magnus trying to close this technological gap and help his father, and in trying to do so it really reminds me that while technology can be a great force that we must contend with, it's the heart and connection we have with others that gives things meaning.

Boiler Room Beasties by Gustavo Bondoni

This is a haunting tale set on a space station seemingly abandoned by its human operators. We've got a group of genetically engineered cats who've been given orders to protect the ship against these enhanced insects. It sounds cute, but it's lethal and brutal. Even more haunting is how the story is generational, the new kittens who have been born and reached maturity have never even seen the humans that they're meant to be continuing the orders of. Through no fault of their own, they just can't grasp some of the orders they're expected to follow and why the orders even exist. So can this new generation's fresh perspective help solve the problems in a way that the older generation can't? Or does their relative naievity mean they don't fully recognise that the ways of their parents had wisdom in it even if it can't be properly described? Either way, as time goes on, it'll always be the new generation making the decisions.

Hanging By a Thread by Nenekiri Bookwyrm

Before reading this story I never considered that a spider might have a burning passion towards being a film maker. This cute story helped rectify that.

The Maneless by David M. Sula

A pride of lions where everyone is trans male, hence the moniker of the Maneless. It's setting is feral enough that they still need to hunt and maintain territories, but anthro enough that they have markets and still have conversations with other species and prides. It's a pretty heavy story as the protagonist, Marrow, and his tribe have to fight for bare survival while essentially being treated as outcasts or weirdos by pretty much everyone else. Even worse, most in the pride have a tragic backstory of rejection from their former pride, often with people they cared about simply not understanding or refusing to accept them in any new role. There's hardship piling in from every direction in this story, but that's the theme. Trying to take step forwards when everything is against you, even when you're not even sure what the next step is, and finding things to help keep you going.

Computer Literacy for Deities by Linnea Capps

This is a super fun story. Basically a literal "god" is trying to figure out how to use a computer with the help of an IT "Guy". Lots of cute interactions and neat tech humour. Must be hard to learn new stuff when you're older than the universe!

Blind by Frances Pauli

I'm not the biggest fan of "dating" genre stories, but I empathise with someone like Marley who, being a vulture, isn't exactly getting a lot of positive feedback over her appearance. This isn't helped by her active dating efforts which means she's often at the mercy of first impressions. She understandably buys a feathered full-hood wig to make her first impressions more favourable, and we dive right into the theme of covering up who you are to make yourself more accepted by those around you.

Sharks and Dolphins by Priya Sridhar

With modern culture perceiving Sharks as "evil" and Dolphins as "good", this story challenges this view by showing things from the shark perspective. I honestly thought the story ended too abruptly, long before the conflict before the two species had been resolved, but maybe that's the point.

Poyekhali! by Cedric G! Bacon

Man, this is an epic. A full on Soviet space mission that feels like it delivers far more than a short story is ever meant to be able to convey. Drama, ambition, government intrigue, and the minor detail of several tonnes of rocket fuel ready to blast someone into space! I was almost afraid it would be one of those short stories that cut off mid-story, but thankfully, it's a full saga I was happy to read!

Virtual Sight by Sofox and Gabi

Disclosure: I wrote this with Gabi helping me formulate the idea.

It's about teens playing around with "Vizors", augmented reality goggles that overlay virtual graphics on your view of the real world. This includes real time avatars on you and those around you, meaning you can look down at yourself and see yourself in an antho-cheetah body, as will everyone else around you who's also wearing Vizors. I tried to keep the story light and fun, playing around with the concept and some of the inevitable arbitrary gaming conventions that would make the leap to this new medium. Hopefully you'll enjoy it.

Not All Mysteries by Frank Lerenard

Okay, this is a super good story that sticks in your mind in spite of (or because of?) the simple premise. A hole appears outside of town. That's it.

Why is the hole there, what is its purpose? Those are questions the raven townsfolk get increasingly focused on as they note the hole's mysterious properties, that it's perfectly round, goes straight down, doesn't have a visible bottom, and definitely wasn't there before. They talk, they discuss, they come up with experiments, they recruit outsider help. It's all really engaging. One of the really neat parts of the story was that you really get a sense that this is a town that exists in its own right, not just for the sake of the story. It's citizens have their own lives to go about, and events to attend, but over the months and changing seasons their attention keeps coming back to that hole and finding new ways to figure out what it's about.

In some ways, this story pins what innovation is about more than any other story in this anthology. Innovation isn't just cool tech, or a single instantaneous breakthrough, it's a constant process of trying to come up with new ways of dealing with a problem and figure things out. There are dead ends, plans, setbacks, cross pollination of ideas with others, frustrating results, and all the while our lives continue on whether a breakthrough is around the corner or not. Still, it always seems worth trying.

Steelsworn by Juniper V. Stokes

Large scale magic powered war involving battles with huge beasts and a smattering of war politics and regret. I enjoyed while reading and had some nice actions sequences and war strategy, but didn't make a massive impression.

Sugar Magnolia by K.C. Shaw

Teens starting a band, a classic premise. In this case the "innovation" comes from mixing genres with them trying to start a bluegrass rock band (they're based in Tennessee). The story feels very believable. How some big band helped inspire their formation in the first place, how they take risks to get started, how they don't really know what they're doing but figure things out, how they make unusual alliances to fill out the band. More than the set of actions, you really feel the motivations of all the people involved. The band exists because people's motivations get wrapped up in something that temporarily unifies them. The story recognises this, but also shows how powerful and affecting the band can be while it still exists. With so many "band" stories, it feels that either they have to make it to the "big time" or they're failures. This story feels so much better presenting the band their own merits and the effect it has on it's members.

Unity On the Divide by Juan Carlos Moreno

It's one of those days. You're flying a massive airship over hostile terrain, you crash, and you have to team up with the human war prisoners you were transporting to fight against deadly robots, am I right?

This story, which honestly feels like it was at one time pitched to The Reclamation Project (which the author has a story in), is pretty good. There's definitely this feeling of a wider conflict between the anthros and the humans, which now has to take a back seat to the more pressing problem. There's efforts at survival, bloody fights, bonding, bodging things together, and even a discussion on the nature of innovation and how the different species approach it especially with their history in mind. I found the whole story super satisfying and a bit like I'd been through part of the ordeal myself.

Otters Can't Rig. Badgers Can't Pull by Mephitis

A really interesting labour conflict story set in a construction yard for airships. While I can't be sure the methods employed here would work for real life workplaces, you really feel for Royce, who just wants the workers to do their job while two separate groups of specialised workers can't stop being in a feud with each other. I liked this steampunk-esque world, and thoughts on the innovations with regard to skilled professions.

Octopus Ex Machina by Mary E. Lowd

A group of people who've had their bodies changed into various animal forms have to brave a hate crowd just to get to a swimming pool. Once there, the real fun begins.

Another cute story involving an otter and octopus with techy devices (yes, from the book cover) and their meeting at a swimming pool after an unexpected event. Its interesting to have a backdrop of hate with a foreground of fun shenanigans and making connections, but I think it works and is a nice story.

There's a really good selection of really enjoyable stories here, all with vastly different genres and takes on the theme. There wasn't a single story that dragged the collection down, and generally a lot of energy.

Review by Casimir Laski

Note: This review contains minor spoilers.

With Dog Country and Mouse Cage, author Malcolm F. Cross appears to have bridged quite an imposing literary gap: managing to write a pair of novels that are both undeniably “furry,” in so far as they fully utilize and explore their protagonists’ existence as anthropomorphic animals, and simultaneously feel at home amongst mainstream, contemporary, grounded science fiction. Given that the two books not only share their near-future setting but contain limited narrative overlap, and more broadly serve as thematic companion pieces to one another, I believe it is appropriate to review them together.

Dog Country and Mouse Cage belong firmly to what I term the “hybrid anthro” category of furry writing, arguably the most common type found in traditional speculative fiction, where anthropomorphic animals exist alongside ordinary humans in some variant of our world as a result of either magic, convergent evolution, or genetic engineering. Cross’ furries (the in-universe colloquialism favored over the politically correct “synthetic persons”) are a result of the latter. First developed in laboratories in the mid-to-late 21^stCentury, various species were designed for different purposes by Estian Industries, only for the “Emancipation” to end their collective existence as corporate property and bestow upon them legal personhood.

Set primarily in the early years of the 22^ndCentury, albeit told in not-entirely chronological order, in both works Cross hits the ground running with one of his strongest elements: his worldbuilding. Envisioning what human society might look like just shy of a century from now is no light undertaking, and obviously grants authors an imposing degree of leeway, but through what was either extremely thorough research and predictive consideration, or a string of damn good bluffs, the author constructs a setting that feels both disturbingly possible as a light-cyberpunk semi-dystopia, and yet unnervingly familiar to the present.

Vast swathes of Russia, Kazakhstan and China have been devastated in the “Eurasian War” of the 2060’s and 70’s; chemical, nuclear, and biological fallout from the conflict has further threatened the already precarious global ecosystem. From the ashes of failed states in equatorial South America, the Middle American Corporate Preserve operates as a late-capitalist nation-state and financial juggernaut with international reach. Drones and 3D-printing are ubiquitous, nuclear fusion appears on the cusp of being feasibly commercially utilized, fighting is dominated by electronic warfare, and advances in genetic engineering have trickled down to the lowest rungs of society.

But Cross doesn’t spell much of this out to the reader, instead leaving it to them to pick up the various puzzle pieces he scatters throughout his narratives and assemble them into a more coherent picture, an approach I personally find quite rewarding and engaging. Rather than point out what would to us be the eccentricities of his imagined future, he generally presents the speculative elements of his story as his characters see them in the course of their daily lives—including their status as genetically engineered, humanoid animals.

Which brings us to the first of the novels: Dog Country. Though sections of several chapters are told from the perspectives of a few of his clone brothers, the spotlight primarily falls on Edane Estian, a humanoid dog designed by Estian Industries for one purpose only: to be a soldier. The only problem is, after seven years of intensely disciplined upbringing, he was freed from the program, along with his brothers and all of the other genetically engineered “furries,” declared a legal person, and adopted by a human family in a process known as the “Emancipation.”

After a childhood of struggling to adapt to human norms, Edane enlisted with a private military corporation alongside a number of his brothers, serving briefly in Tajikistan during a period of unrest, only to be severely wounded in a suicide bombing shortly before the country descended into civil war. Now, living back in the comfortable suburbs of the MACP, Edane has a normal life: a steady girlfriend, Janine (a fellow furry, herself a humanoid thylacine), two loving adoptive mothers, and a place on a MilSim team that has a chance at going professional, playing a sort of augmented-reality infused, paintball/airsoft-style sports wargame. But in spite of all this, Edane still feels a vague longing for purpose, only exacerbated by the fact that he knows exactly what he was made to do: fight, and kill.

Now in his twenties, the dog soldier recognizes that this element of his nature should disturb him, that he should instead be contended with what he has—but, with the exception of his service in the Caucasus, ever since the Emancipation, Edane has never truly felt like he belonged. And so, when several of his brothers form a communally organized PMC and take on a contract to overthrown the repressive dictatorship of Azerbaijan, crowdfunded by the country’s own citizens, Edane is faced with a choice: does he linger in his current malaise in hopes that things will eventually settle, or embrace what he was literally born to do and rush halfway across the world into yet another warzone?

As mentioned before, the author’s constructed world of San Iadras (taking its name from the capital city of the MACP) is fully realized in ways that convincingly balance futuristic innovation with speculation drawn from current societal, political, and technological trajectories, rendering the setting itself as almost another character, complementing the human(oid) cast: always present and yet never intrusive, engaging without being distracting. The very concept of a civil war crowdfunded via the internet and boosted by social media may yet pan out, and feels right at home in the long tradition of science fiction authors making genuine, if often far-fetched at the time, predictions about the conjoined evolution of technology and broader human society.

Edane himself, while not a particularly complex character (intentionally so, given his artificial genetic coding and rigorously disciplined early life), proves to be a suitable vector for introducing readers to the 22^ndCentury that Cross envisions. Additionally, it is easy to draw parallels to autism regarding the difficulties he faces in adapting to social norms that everyone around him just seems to naturally understand. I will admit that I found some of Edane’s central internal conflict to be underexplored, perhaps owing to the novel’s rather brisk pacing and length, but the supporting characters, some of whom receive perspective chapters or chapter-sections of their own, play off the protagonist, and round out the story’s cast, rather nicely.

While the neatly wrapped up ending arrives somewhat abruptly, the often-non-chronological chapter order may leave some readers confused (especially when diving into an already-unfamiliar setting), and the author’s prose occasionally features the missteps of a talented up-and-comer finding his footing (the novel having been self-published in 2016 before a 2020 re-editing), all in all, Dog Country is a solid military science fiction story, serving as a strong introduction to Malcolm Cross’ rich near-future setting, and comprising a fairly light read.

That is not in any way something that could be said of Mouse Cage. The second of Cross’ “San Iadras” novels is longer in word count, deeper in characterization, as well as narrative and thematic complexity, and far, far darker in terms of subject matter: Where Dog Country certainly contains its genre-standard moments of violence and gore, trauma and mourning, there are not-infrequent points in which Mouse Cage feels like the emotional equivalent of being forced to swallow broken glass—and given that I mean that as a compliment, I must elaborate.

Mouse Cage tells the story of Troy Salcedo, an anthropomorphic black-furred mouse created, like his twenty-three brothers, for laboratory research. Categorized by their human overseers as “Class-C specimens,” the two dozen clones were subjected to experiments with absolutely no ethical or legal restrictions—experiments which claimed three of the twenty-four brothers before Troy’s outbursts during a corporate audit resulted in the Emancipation.

At the beginning of this review, I described these novels as companion pieces, and in this, I cannot help but think of the contrast between Jack London’s two xenofiction masterpieces, The Call of the Wild and White Fang: the former involving a domestic dog going feral, and the latter a wild wolf becoming tame. But unlike in London’s most celebrated works, there is no moral equivocation here: The Estians of Dog Country, raised to be strong and capable, instilled with discipline and a sense of grander purpose, look on the Emancipation with emotions ranging from disillusion to outright despair, and, even once free, gravitate of their own volition towards the military service for which they were created. But for the surviving Salcedo brothers of Mouse Cage, the Emancipation quite literally saved their lives from an existence too horrifying for most people to comprehend, and yet, because of their traumatic experiences, despite their strenuous efforts to move on, in many ways they remain trapped years after they first emerged into the sunlight from the labs of Lake North. Edane pines for the security and certainty of doing exactly what he was created for; Troy spends his every waking moment desperately trying to forget that purpose.

The story begins with Troy delivering a speech at a benefit dinner for the foundation that supports his family, filling in for another of his clone brothers. Opening with a grim anecdote on the incinerator used to dispose of bodies in the lab, and describing how their “specimen classification” marked them as suitable for “testing” without any ethical restrictions, readers are given glimpses from the very first page that the confident façade Troy shows to his brothers and the world is just that. While far from the only one with even visible scars, he bears the most prominent mark of their shared past: a prosthetic arm, designed by his mechanically skilled brother Saigon. Plagued by recurring nightmares of his time in the labs of Lake North, most commonly involving the loss of his real left arm, which was surgically removed without anesthetic (save for that applied to his vocal cords, to mute his screaming), Troy is further burdened with overwhelming guilt over the part he was forced to play in experimenting on his brothers when the doctors used the exposed nerve endings of his arm to interface him with complex equipment.

Given that Troy was the clone most “favored” (if it could be called that) by the doctors when selecting “specimens” for assistance, and that it was his daring to speak up during a corporate audit that revealed the horrors of their treatment to the outside world, he has assumed the position of de facto “eldest” in the family—the one his brothers can always turn to when they need help, while, in his own mind, undeserving of being able to rely on them in turn. Of the twenty-four Salcedo brothers, three never made it out of the labs, and seven have died since—of disease, murder, accidents, and even suicide—each loss another crushing reminder of Troy’s own inadequacies.

And it is in this state, forced to relive a portion of his trauma in front of a selection of wealthy donors, that he meets Jennifer Dixon, a genetically engineered thylacine working various odd jobs, including as an erotic dancer. When their initial failed one-night stand leads to a deeper form of intimacy, the two enter into an openly on-again, off-again relationship punctuated by lavishly detailed sexual encounters—an arrangement Troy finds it increasingly difficult to live with the more he falls in love with her, even as she refuses to utter those same words back to him.

Mouse Cage manages to be a surprising number of things in the course of its lengthy and somewhat meandering-by-design narrative, often at the same time: an erotic romance burning with passion, and a tragic exploration of a toxic relationship between two uniquely damaged partners who nonetheless derive crucial support from one another; a gut-wrenching account of survivor’s guilt and a tragic slice-of-life family drama; a science-fiction thriller and a social commentary piece; a globe-trotting dystopian adventure tale and a grueling account of an addict relapsing under pressure. And, perhaps even more surprisingly, it manages to be all of these rather remarkably well, while never feeling exploitative or sensationalist in even its bleakest and most harrowing moments.

In the course of Troy and Jennifer’s tangled romance, Cross takes his readers from the glistening high-rises of uptown San Iadras to the slums of Del Cora, and from the University of Minnesota’s nuclear reactor, where Troy works on his doctoral dissertation, to the wastelands of post-apocalyptic Central Asia, aiding refugees and collecting samples of the ravaged environment. However, this novel is not what I would consider “plot-driven,” as these various locales serve far more as backdrops for the true story.

Instead, it is Tory’s personal journey that remains the central focus, and Malcolm Cross fully delivers when it comes to providing readers with a richly layered, deeply flawed, and yet irresistibly sympathetic hero, regardless of what the character in question would think of the term being applied to him. This is not to say that the events of the story play no part in his development, but rather that he himself possesses enough substance to retain the audience’s investment: Through the ups and downs of his confusing relationship with Jennifer; doctoral research in nuclear physics and ordinary life on the streets of San Iadras. Through the turmoil of depression and bitter guilt over what was done to him, what he did to survive, and what he failed to do for his brothers, driving him into the abyss of despair and relapse. Through persistent nightmares that leave him barely able to function, and waking flashbacks of both his hellish years in the lab, and his dearly bought freedom in a Catholic orphanage under the tutelage of the benevolent Padre Muñez, who adopted the surviving twenty-one brothers when no other humans would. Through all of this, Troy Salcedo comes across as a shockingly, often disturbingly, authentic and relatable portrayal of the human condition.

His brothers—each named after a different city—round out the effect brilliantly. Dallas, who affects a down-to-earth demeanor and distracts himself with scientific fascinations while secretly shouldering the same trauma as his brothers; Philadelphia, the corporate-government ladder-climber who thinks the world of Troy despite knowing his flaws better than anyone else, and abandoned his academic pursuits to find a job that would allow him to covertly support their family financially; Florence, a teacher who fears ostracization by his brothers on account of being gay, struggling to reconcile this with both his religious upbringing post-Emancipation, and the way his attempts to find genuine romantic companionship are hindered by his prospective partners’ frequent fetishization of his status as a genetically engineered animal.

As would be expected from any large family, the Salcedos have their own complex internal dynamics, with certain brothers sticking together in twos or threes as other pairs clash over differences of personality, while others still remain aloof. Not only do they feel like people individually, but like a family when taken collectively, and their mutual love is palpable, shining beautifully through even the darkest stretches of the story: always providing support for one another regarding employment and living situations, education and healthcare; ever watchful for warning signs of depression and suicidal ideation, and just making themselves available when another finds himself in need of someone to talk to or lean on—even when Troy steadfastly believes he does not deserve it.

At the core of both of Cross’ novels lies a question that anthropomorphic fiction is in many ways uniquely suited to grapple with: what exactly does it mean to be a “person”? Dog Country certainly engages with this subject, but never with the incisive immediacy that Mouse Cage does—and this brings me back to something I mentioned in the opening. I have read my fair share of furry fiction, produced both within and without the fandom, that features characters so fully realized that they feel “authentically human,” but I have never seen it handled quite in the way Malcolm Cross manages. Madison Scott-Clary’s A Wildness of the Heart, like many stories in the “coffeshop fox” subgenre of furry fiction, uses its excellently characterized anthropomorphic cast as stand-ins for humanity, their “furriness” having more impact as metacommentary than within the text; meanwhile, a novel like Jonathan Edward Durham’s Winterset Hollow, despite placing fascinatingly written anthropomorphic animals into our real world, remains told from the perspective of the humans who encounter them. But Mouse Cage fully commits to exploring the existence of a genetically engineered animal living in a human-dominated world, that, although set eight decades in the future, is a strong reflection of our own.

Tying into characterization, the author’s dialogue often contains an intentional clunky awkwardness, punctuated by evocative depictions of body language, going to great lengths to imitate real, unscripted conversations, and show, rather than tell, what his characters are thinking and feeling. Beyond this, Cross’ general prose, already strong in the first San Iadras novel, sees steady improvement here as well, though there are a handful of phrases, especially for certain gestures and quirks, that are reused excessively. On a related note, some portions of the novel, specifically involving Troy’s strained relationship and deep-seated sense of self-loathing, do at times seem a bit repetitive—though I must both acknowledge that this is part of the package deal when writing a story involving battling with addiction and severe trauma, and admit my sympathies in knowing how difficult it can be to balance portraying repetitive behavior without one’s writing itself seeming repetitive. At the risk of sounding slightly puritanical, some of the sex scenes come across as rather gratuitous, though again, it could be argued that this is part of the point, helping readers to experience the euphoric highs and devastating lows of the protagonist’s life. I also have a sneaking suspicion that Jennifer, and her tumultuous relationship with Troy, will be contentious among readers—much as it is among Troy’s own brothers—but I’ll leave others to come to their own conclusions.

As a character study, Mouse Cage takes a mildly unorthodox structure regarding plotting: In the manner of real life, sometimes things will simply not work out, with plot threads cut short as a sudden development shifts the narrative focus, or the characters come up against an obstacle too imposing, and are left with no choice but to pack their bags and move on. (Though, given that in the author’s note, Cross expresses interest in continuing Troy’s story, I retain hope for a certain world-renowned physicist to be taken down a peg, but I digress). There aren’t even any proper overarching antagonists—or, perhaps more accurately, the novel’s only true villains last personally interacted with the rest of the cast nearly two decades before the point at which readers enter the narrative, even as the marks of their torment linger. Likewise, it is hard to pinpoint one particular climax, though two heartbreaking conversations near the end come to mind as contenders—the latter involving a beautifully cathartic informal confession with Padre Muñez. (Despite only being directly featured a handful of times, mostly in flashbacks, the Dominican friar who raised the Salcedos as an adoptive father is easily the standout human character.)

Though in my estimation, Dog Country stands in the shadow of Mouse Cage, the former nonetheless serves as a solid point of entry to Malcolm F. Cross’ highly inventive setting, one that should entice fans of both science fiction and furry literature, while setting the stage nicely for the more visceral experience of its follow-up. And though I have to warn prospective readers that the latter will (or at the very least should) disturb you—will often times throughout its course leave you sick to your stomach and with an aching in your heart—I must add that the ending, although hardly the stuff of fairytales, does feel like several breaths of fresh morning air after a long, dark night.

Review by Sofox

Anima: The Bird House takes place in a world just like our own with one difference: There is a condition that will slowly and irreversibly transform you into an animal. The condition is called Anima, and it's at the "scientists are just barely beginning to understand" stage. No one seems to know what determines the animal species or how someone even gets it, but the end result is regular humans suddenly find themselves gradually gaining animalistic features (tails, claws, fur, etc) that become more and more prominent before finally making the final transformation to the full animal. This can take months or much longer and people in this stage are called "hybrids".

One such person is Lyall Williams, an average Computer Science student who, after an mini transformation during a lecture, discovers he is gradually turning into a red tailed hawk. He obviously finds this incredibly daunting as he doesn't have a choice over this, the full and final transformation is inevitable at some point in the future, and he doesn't know whether he'll still be "him" after the transformation has complete.

This is actually one point of the worldbuilding I didn't quite jive with. Surely scientists run a series of behavioural experiments on transformed people to see if they are still sapient? If they still have memories of their previous lives and are still "them". However, such answers are not available to the characters in this story. There's a legitimate fear that once you're transformed, you're "just" an animal now and whoever you were ceases to be. A frighting prospects since it is essentially an identity death.

In other words, Anima for many feels like a terminal diagnosis. People's plans for the future are destroyed and replaced by an upcoming inevitability that's hard to wrap your head around. On top of that, elements of degenerative diseases seep in as transformations often interfere with human functions, giving you paws instead of hands for instance or making it hard to speak. Hybrids suddenly have a hard time living in a world that's built for humans.

It's honestly a surprisingly bleak take on transformation and I applaud the author for fully committing to it. So often transformation is used as a superpower, wish fulfilment or plot contrivance. This is a far more grounded take that really dives into a lot of the consequences of this premise.

Another huge compliment to the author: there's no big external element being thrown in here ("save the world", "You're a special Hybrid that suddenly everyone wants", "Hybrid being used for top secret government experiments", etc.), it's just a bunch of people trying to deal with the hand they've been dealt with, leaning on each other for support but ultimately making their own decisions over their life. For all the books I've read, I'm not sure I've ever read a story quite like this. Even though we kinda know what will happen to Lyall, we still want to know what it'll be like and how he'll get there.

And it's written pretty engagingly. Especially at the start, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of details and the story does a good job of covering all the little things that are harder to do with transformed body parts, such as opening doorknobs with wings, how chairs with backs interfere with tail feathers or the way hawk eyes make you practically blind at night. It's really engaging seeing how Lyall tries to meet these challenges and his subtle growth over time, showing he's gradually transforming in more ways than one.

There are sentences where the wrong word or name is used, requiring a quick reread and mental substitution ("plans isle" being most funny example). Sometimes more could have been done to show the connection between Lyall and his housemates; they weren't as strongly described as they could have been, although I did really like the story of how one of them had to quit their job because prospective clients wouldn't take them seriously. The book dragged, perhaps, after its initial burst but before it started gathering steam towards the end.

At the start the prose was a bit awkwardly put, with even emotive things being described a bit too functionally. I put part of this down to assuming that Lyall was somewhat autistic - I swear for more reasons than just that he was studying Computer Science. As the book continued I noticed this less, so I assume it was part me getting more used to the writing and also the writing itself getting smoother and more confident.

Overall, I do love the thrust of the book. It's a story of change, identity, fear of the unknown, and finding strength in numbers. Seeing Lyall on his journey is encouraging, as he faces challenges, engages with others who are going through their own, and receives support and encouragement in return. The premise seems dark, but I think that's what makes Lyall's journey through the darkness all the more uplifting. We may journey with others, but ultimately we take the final step ourselves. Nothing is certain in life except change.

Review by Roz Gibson

Squarriors  (Squirrel + Warriors) is a comic series by Ashley Witter (art) and Ash Maczko (writer). It is one of a spate of recent furry graphic novels with super-detailed, gorgeous art—paired with stories that are an incomprehensible mess. The main premise is something that’s become a bit of a trope—animals suddenly and inexplicably develop consciousness and intelligence.  This has been done in books (The Awareness and the War With No Name trilogy) and in comics (the Animosity series).

In Squarriors, the premise is that something referred to as “the flash” uplifted animals and wiped out humanity 10 years prior. The animals separated themselves into several competing groups, each of which follows a different ‘code.’  They then proceeded to go to war with each other, with the good guys of the story, called Tin Kin, who follow the “Code of Will,” being on the verge of being wiped out by the other two factions, the Amoni, who follow the “Code of Blood,” and the Maw, who follow the “Code of Might.”

Volume #2, Summer, picks up where volume #1 (not surprisingly, entitled Spring) left off. The Tin Kin huddle in their stronghold (an abandoned steam locomotive) while a combined army of Amoni and Maw marches to wipe them out. There’s some additional plot wrinkles, such as Ghost, a deadly assassin, being sent into the Tin Kin fortress to kill a Maw traitor, and Spin, a Tin Kin captured and sent to the Amoni feeding camps. It’s also made clear early on that the Amoni intend to betray the Maw once the Tin Kin are eliminated. At the beginning of each chapter, there are some non sequitur sequences of a human family and their dog in the waning days of civilization. I’m sure this will (eventually) tie in to the main storyline, but right now it doesn’t.

Virtually all the animals in this comic are small. Tin Kin is mostly squirrels, flying squirrels, mice, and a few birds. A red fox is also a member, along with someone named Cheeks, who looks like a giant fat squirrel, but I think is a woodchuck. The Amoni is ruled by cats, but also has squirrels, rats, weasels and birds of prey. The Maw is mostly squirrels and rats, but also has a porcupine. The brother of the Tin Kin woodchuck, who has the odd name of Meat, is a member of the Maw too.  The largest animals seen in the entire series so far is a mid-sized dog and a single raccoon. There’s no mention of anything larger, no deer or big domestic animals like horses or cattle, no coyotes, wolves or bobcats.

This lack of diversity is one of the major problems with the series—you have three fighting factions mostly composed of squirrels and rats, and in the battle scenes it’s almost impossible to tell who is who. If you really study the art it looks like the Tin Kin all wear some scrap of blue cloth, but in the rain and confusion it isn’t very clear. It’s also very difficult to tell the squirrels apart, which is due to the realistic way they’re rendered. (In real life one can’t really tell one squirrel from another.) Since the latter part of the book is one huge battle scene, it gets confusing really fast.

There are a few other things that don’t make sense—the Amoni feeding camps are meant to keep captives alive for the cats to eat, but for some reason they allow everyone in them to die of starvation. And what does the fox in the Tin Kin group eat? (The dilemma of obligate carnivores is a major issue in the Animosity series) Midway through the book we’re introduced to another group of good guy animals (who are promptly wiped out by the Amoni) and the survivors take shelter with the Tin Kin. A mouse with the confusing name of Oh announces that the refugees are going to ‘save them,’ but never explains how, and they’re not shown doing anything helpful.

Despite starring squirrels, chipmunks and other adorable small animals, this is a pretty bloody series. You get to see squirrels killed by being stabbed in the mouth, a rat crushed in a raccoon’s jaws, and a cat that gets impaled with a fish hook, among other gruesome deaths. So if you ever wanted to see squirrels dying horribly, this is definitely the book to read.

As mentioned in the beginning, the artwork on this book is absolutely gorgeous. It’s worth getting for that alone.  Occasionally the backgrounds will be a little too detailed, which can make it hard to pick out the characters, and the artist uses blurs to indicate fast action, which doesn’t work at all, but those are minor quibbles. I honestly can’t think of another comic that has animals so realistically drawn and rendered.

A brief caveat—this volume does end on a cliffhanger, and I have not heard a single peep about when the next story arc will be out.  It was literally years between issues of Summer, and during that production the artist had a baby. That’s usually the death knell for side gigs like Squarriors, so I would not be surprised if there’s never another issue produced. But I do hope they prove me wrong.

Review by Roz Gibson

Adrian Tchaikovsky is an author that furry fans of hard SF should become familiar with.  He wrote the excellent Children of Memory, which features a civilization of intelligent jumping spiders, and the follow up, Children of Ruin, which has intelligent octopi. Bearhead is a sequel to Dogs of War, both more overtly furry books than Children of Memory. Dogs of War follows a common trope in furry books: uplifted animals being used as slaves to fight wars or work in law enforcement. The protagonist of that book is Rex, a dog super-soldier, but it also featured other members of his squad, which included Honey, a bear, and Bees, a hive-mind (hah hah).

Bearhead takes place years after the first book, where the uplifted animals, called Bioforms, have some limited rights, but still end up working the dirty jobs. The dirtiest jobs are on Mars, where they labor alongside modified humans to terraform the planet. The main protagonist is Jimmy Martin, an augmented human made to specifically work on Mars. The modified workers are paid next to nothing, and while they’ve been promised they’ll be returned to Earth as normal humans when their contract is up, no one is sure if that will really happen.

Hell City on Mars, where a lot of the story takes place, is about as depressing and dystopian as it comes.  The work is dangerous, the place dreary and claustrophobic, and the laborers spend what little they make on drugs or cheap digital entertainment. There’s a thriving underground economy, and one of the ways Jimmy makes extra money is by ‘renting’ his augmented headspace to store and transport illegal data. It’s all going peachy until he takes a very illegal upload, which turns out to be the stored personality of Honey, the Bioform bear.

The current storyline with Jimmy is peppered with flashbacks of Honey, who has become a political activist and in-demand lecturer after the events in Dogs of War. Intelligent hive-minds like Bees have been completely outlawed, and there’s a political movement to ‘collar’ all bioforms, for the safety of everyone, of course. That movement is being spearheaded by rising politician Warner Thompson, a thinly disguised Trump analog. His fanatical hatred of bioforms makes him target Honey, who is probably the most visible and politically active bioform in the world.

An important secondary character is Carole Springer, Warner Thompson’s assistant.  Through her we get to see how completely amoral he is, basically a caricature of all the worst politicians, along with his equally unpleasant lackeys and a creepy mad doctor. Despite Warner’s hatred of bioforms, he does have dog bioform guards. They belong to a splinter group called Sons of Adam, who believe their higher calling is to serve humans completely. And like all corrupt politicians, he has plenty of dirty secrets he’ll go to any length to keep hidden. Particularly from someone like Honey.

Back on Mars, Jimmy is being pursued by the authorities as well as the criminal element, all desperate to get at the digital version of Honey stored in his head. And it really doesn’t matter if Jimmy is alive or dead when they do the download. Honey is there to find Bees, and ask their help to counter Thompson’s plans. Having fled Earth to the relative safety of Mars, Bees has their own agenda on the red planet, and may not be so willing to help an old comrade. There’s plenty of action as the hapless Jimmy is literally dragged around by Honey, who is able to take complete control of his body and use it like a puppet.

While the leads are human or augmented humans, most of the supporting cast on Mars are bioforms—bears, dogs, weasels and badgers, and at least one cat. And of course there’s the bear, Honey, who we get to see a lot of in non-digital form on Earth as she attempts to find legal ways to stop Thompson.  Along the way she engages a sympathetic lawyer with the last name of Aslan, which I thought was amusing.

While technically a sequel to Dogs of War, Bearhead stands nicely on its own and it isn’t necessary to read the first book to enjoy it. That being said, Dogs of War still comes highly recommended, particularly for fans of military SF, and people interested in uplifted animals presented by an author outside of furry fandom.

Review by Roz Gibson

The Bastis Archives series, written by L.E. Henderson, was an unexpected find. Paw and Prowl are the first two books of what I assume will be a trilogy (the final volume hasn’t been released yet). This review will have some minor spoilers, since it’s impossible to talk about the second volume without revealing how the first ends.  So keep that in mind if you prefer to approach books completely spoiler-free.

This is the story of Mitalla, nicknamed ‘Mittens,’ an anthro cat living in what seems to be a typical pre-industrial world. The anthro cats are referred to as “Kats” (with a hard “K” as Mitalla explains), to differentiate them from normal four-legged cats. She has a relatively idyllic first three years with her mother and three siblings, Sue Bess, TomTom and Gordy. But the very first line of the book reveals that she and all the other Kats in that world are born slaves, and it doesn’t take long before the four siblings are taken away to face the harsh reality of their life.

And harsh it is. In a lot of ways this is not a pleasant series to read. Most of the Kats are kept as forced labor to dig something called omni-glass, which the king desperately wants for a purpose that isn’t explained until late in the second book. The conditions in the work camps are horrible. The slaves are barely fed enough to stay alive, any that are injured are usually killed, and all the guards are sadistic brutes. The main overseer, Master Blue, is particularly awful. The majority of the first book takes place in these camps, and the misery just seems to go on and on.

Trying to stay alive in this environment, Mitalla becomes a skilled thief and pickpocket, something that will come in handy later.  But when her beloved sister Sue Bess unexpectedly turns up in that hellhole, Mitalla's focus shifts from trying to stay alive herself to trying to keep her sister alive.

But Mitalla has some special things going for her that the other Kats don’t. Her mother gave her a seemingly cheap, ordinary locket…except that it sometimes gives her odd dreams. Later the dreams become more vivid, with a mysterious voice that doesn’t just talk to her, but will give her needed items in exchange for something she already possesses.  In addition to the locket, her mother also taught her some minor magic skills, one of which happens to help with finding omni-glass. That gets her temporarily out of the camp and subject to special attention from Master Blue, something that is definitely a double-edged sword.

When Mitalla finally escapes at the end of book 1, she’s taken in by a friendly house Kat named Murray. But Mitalla has gone from the frying pan into the fire-- it turns out Murray, another Kat named Rory, and Murray’s young kitten, are all slaves of Sebastian, an evil magician who makes Master Blue look like a Boy Scout. Virtually every human being in this story is a complete douche, even the few that are initially seen as sort-of sympathetic. At the end of book two the reason for everyone being an asshole is explained, but an astute reader may figure out what is going on faster than I did.

Mitalla is first put to work as a thief, but later Sebastian discovers a greater value in her—she has the ability to find three lost artifacts of great power that will lead to the Journal of the Grey Goddess. Sebastian wants the journal because anyone who finds it will discover all the secrets of the world, and Mitalla wants to find it to free herself and the other Kats. One of those artifacts turns out to be Bastis-bot, a toy robot cat not unlike the artificial cat from the Buzz Lightyear movie. Except Bastis-bot was programmed to be terminally depressed and nihilistic, which leads to some interesting dialogue between her and Mitalla.

Eventually Mitalla comes to the realization that the only way she and the other captives will escape Sebastian is if she, too, learns to wield dark magic like he can. But that comes at a price—the more she does it, the more it will corrupt her. The only way to counter that effect is diligent meditation, and once again her mother’s teachings come in handy, as purring turns out to be the perfect way to meditate:

Time to Purr

You have a special prize

That exists between your eyes

A treasure no one else can see

Of soft tranquility

When dire mishaps occur

When you have frost clumps on your fur

It is time to purr

At the end of Prowl everything is revealed, including the secret behind their world, and what Mitalla’s final, seemingly impossible task will be. While Mitalla is overall a sympathetic character, her harsh life and lack of education sometimes causes her to take morally questionable or even foolish actions.  When Master Blue commits a particularly horrible atrocity, she kills his prized horse in retaliation, an event that will have repercussions for the rest of the series.

The villains are completely loathsome—no handsome, suave bad guys here. And Bastis-bot does grow on you, despite her gloomy attitude. If you can deal with the brutality that the characters have to endure, this is an excellent story. I burned through the first two volumes, and eagerly await the final one.

Review by Casimir Laski

This November marks the 50^thanniversary of Richard Adams’ landmark xenofiction novel Watership Down, a story whose influence in the field of animal literature is comparable to the effect that Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings had on modern fantasy. Curiously enough, while Adams was not the first author to write about fictional rabbit societies coming into conflict—that peculiar distinction falls to author Pat Murphy, whose extremely obscure 1948 novel The Wind Protect You serves as an interesting footnote in the genre’s history—Watership Down goes far beyond any of its predecessors in envisioning what the culture of a non-human species might look like. And so, to mark the occasion, I think it fitting not only to return to Adams’ lapine epic for a mid-century retrospective, but to journey through the depths of animal literature in order to properly establish just how visionary the esteemed English author’s debut truly was.

Literary Predecessors

Stories told from the perspectives of nonhuman animals have seen their share of change in both popularity and substance since the genre’s inception in 1877, with the publication of Anna Sewell’s groundbreaking Black Beauty, a tale of a horse traded between owners of varying temperaments. In its infancy, animal xenofiction emerged as an extension of late-19^thand early-20^thCentury progressivism, and throughout its adolescence the genre remained definitively anthropocentric: while books like Sewell’s Black Beauty and Margaret Marshall Saunders’ Beautiful Joe are told from the perspectives of a horse and a dog, respectively, each remains heavily focused on contemporary socio-political (and therefore inherently human) issues such as temperance, suffrage, and the humane treatment of children and livestock. Literary figures as renowned as Rudyard Kipling (Thy Servant a Dog) and Virginia Woolf (Flush) would even dabble in the genre, but it was not until the tail end of the 1800s that those writing xenofiction would truly aim to explore the world through alien perspectives.

With the emergence of authors such as Ernest Thompson Seton and Jack London around the turn of the century, animal literature quickly shifted from its moralistic origins into more realistic, grounded stories that ventured beyond the issues of the day into broader philosophical exploration; the former’s Wild Animals I Have Known set the stage for this revolution, while the latter’s celebrated The Call of the Wild and White Fang remain household-name-level literary classics to this day. Though moralist works would continue to be published, by the time the first decade of the 20^thCentury had drawn to a close, realism was decidedly in vogue among xenofiction authors, and would remain so for more than half a century.

While it may seem surprising to contemporary observers (and, might I add, personally enviable), at this time, animal xenofiction was quite possibly the most popular literary genre in North America: the now-largely forgotten “Nature Fakers” controversy, which involved disputes over accuracy in literary depictions of animal behavior, raged throughout newspapers and magazines across the continent for over half a decade, involving hundreds of authors, journalists, and naturalists, and even eliciting the involvement of the sitting president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. (As an aside, this bizarre episode of American cultural history seems to have foreshadowed the debates over movie and television show quality that rage endlessly on social media today).

As the world suffered through the carnage of the First World War and the subsequent turmoil of the Great Depression, the genre steadily waned in popularity, though it saw a minor resurgence beginning in the late 1960s at the hands of Daniel P. Mannix. The Fox and the Hound, the Pennsylvanian naturalist’s best-known work, a brutal, unsentimental, and methodically researched tale of a vendetta between a hunter and his hound and an elusive fox, arguably represents the highwater mark of strict realism in animal xenofiction. Mannix’s string of animal novels, the releases of which coincided with the infancy of the environmentalist movement, enjoyed modest success and were generally well received by critics, but by the start of the 1970s it appeared that animal stories would never again captivate audiences as they had near the turn of the 20^thCentury.

A Bold New Direction

Then, in November of 1972, something rather extraordinary happened: Watership Down, an epic, semi-magical realist novel about rabbits living in the English countryside, written by a 52-year-old civil servant with no prior experience as a novelist and released through an obscure London publisher, took the literary world by storm. Critics on both sides of the Atlantic lauded its originality and charm, rocketing it to the top of the New York Times best sellers list, where it would remain for most of the following year.

Interestingly enough, what gave Adams’ novel such broad appeal and generated such strong interest appears to have been the reasons for which it was rejected by seven different agents and publishers before being taken on, with great hesitancy, by Rex Collings (who, it should be noted, wrote to an associate half-jokingly asking if he was mad for having taken the risk). Rather than try to portray his rabbit characters in a strictly realistic manner, Adams took the radical approach of constructing for them a thoroughly realized culture, attempting to envision how one might have organically formed within the constraints of their pre-technology existence near the bottom of the food chain.

Adams’ rabbits don’t merely live in communal warrens, they exist within class structures whose strictness can vary wildly between communities: individual chiefs (or, in some cases, councils) command “Owslas,” castes which serve their leaders as guards, advisors, and military and police forces, while in warrens with sizable populations, “outskirters” are forced to dwell and forage on the fringes of the community. The rabbits possess their own language, “lapine,” which we see bits and pieces of throughout the narrative when appropriate—for instance, the term for “going above ground to feed,” something we as humans don’t require a single word for, is simply rendered as “silflay”—while being able to communicate with other woodland creatures in a sort of rough pidgin.  Rabbits play games of “bobstones” to pass the time, distinguish between carnivorous birds and their non-threatening counterparts as “hawks” and “not-hawks,” and label any quantity above five as “hrair” (literally “many”), being unable to count higher.

And, perhaps most importantly, the rabbits of Watership Down share a complex cycle of folklore and religious beliefs: their worship of the life-giving sun as the benevolent-yet-stern Frith feels immanently appropriate for an herbivorous species, while the Black Rabbit of Inlé is tasked with shepherding the souls of the departed to the mysterious land of moonrise. The trickster hero El-Ahrairah, the Prince With a Thousand Enemies, is held up as the shining ideal of rabbit-kind: a sort of cross between Adam, Abraham, Robin Hood, and Reynard the Fox, at once the father of their people, a wartime leader, the source of their plight, and an unabashed rogue who never shies from using the most underhanded means of trickery to escape danger, outwit his foes, and benefit his own kin.

Throughout the course of Watership Down, Adams mixes the tales of El-Ahrairah and his companions into the narrative, with the group sharing stories that often parallel, and in some cases are drastically juxtaposed against, their own experiences. Certain rabbits, such as Fiver, the younger brother of the protagonist Hazel, are even blessed (or cursed) with mystical sight, able to sense things beyond natural perception and catch glimpses of the future—which, in the case of the novel, is what sets our heroes on their journey away from the doomed warren of Sandleford in southern England, the community condemned to destruction to make way for a human housing development. All of these highly inventive decisions serve to imbue Watership Down with a sense of authenticity that reaches beyond mere verisimilitude; upon first reading the book, I was struck by the impression that, rather than having simply written a novel, Adams had discovered and then managed to translate some great work from a preexisting culture that humanity had only recently become aware of. Indeed, his sparing use of footnotes to explain certain cultural quirks or translate the occasional lapine word or phrase only heightens this sense of anthropological (or would it be lapinological?) authenticity.

Classical Influences in the Modern Age

Born into an upper-middle-class family in 1920, as Europe was only just beginning to recover from the devastation wrought by the First World War, Richard Adams attended an English boarding school as part of his upbringing. There, he received an extensive education in Greco-Roman classics, his appreciation for which is easily identifiable in his debut. This culturally-rich schooling aided greatly in his efforts to transpose the mythic nature and timeless appeal of the works he so loved into a contemporary story told though the eyes of such an unassuming species. His prose evokes at once the grace of Wordsworth and the stoicism of Homer, and yet retains a rustic, folksy charm complimented by a sly, almost irreverent undercurrent; encountering certain lines, I can practically picture a grandfatherly Adams winking at his audience as he reads before a gathered crowd, the pages lit by a flickering fireplace.

Those tempted to dismiss Adams’ novel as merely “a retelling of The Odyssey with rabbits” miss several key aspects that serve to distinguish his lapine epic from its influences. While Watership Down certainly does draw on the works of Homer, it is far from a simple retread of any one classical work: the journey of Hazel’s band through the English countryside naturally evokes the adventurous tone of The Odyssey, but their flight from the doomed warren at Sandleford has a much clearer parallel to Aeneas and his companions’ escape from Troy at the beginning of The Aeneid, and the Efrafan siege of Watership Down itself mirrors the climax of The Iliad, only to feature the defenders snatching victory from the jaws of certain defeat. Even the epigram to the first chapter of Adams’ novel, “The Notice Board,” features an ominous excerpt from Aeschylus’ tragic play Agamemnon, in which the king’s concubine Cassandra, the archetypal foundation for the character of Fiver, prophecies destruction: “The house reeks of death and dripping blood… the stench is like a breath from the tomb.”

Additionally, by telling his story from the perspective of rabbits living in then-present-day England, Adams focuses the attention of readers on their own domineering position within the natural world: the roles of the gods and monsters that toy with and torment Odysseus and his men on their journey home are filled here by ordinary humans, automobiles and roadways, domestic dogs and common machinery. In this way, the familiar, tame environment known to most of us is inverted into a terrifying wilderness fraught with danger, a rugged frontier overlapping the tranquil countryside our own eyes see. And the use of the rabbit, an animal nearly universally preyed upon by the predatory species whose habitat it shares, whose surest methods of fighting back are not ferocity or strength but cunning and agility, only serves to elevate the mortality-centered philosophy that infuses the entire novel.

Richly Layered Commentary

But despite its classical influences and romantic trappings, Watership Down is a distinctly modernist novel, condemning the destructive tendencies of humanity as a species, skeptical of narratives that equate civilization’s advance with unambiguous progress, possessing deep reverence for the natural world, and interested in exploring differing societal systems. After all, the novel’s inciting incident stems from a callous decision by humans to clear more land for yet another housing development, showing no regard for the “lesser” species with whom they share the world—a narrative choice that undoubtedly connected with environmentalist concerns of the time.

However, rather than commenting directly on contemporary sociopolitical issues, Adams appears to have wisely followed in the footsteps of Tolkien, preferring loose applicability to rigid allegory—yet another aspect of his magnificent debut that has likely contributed to its significant cultural staying power. One of the most prominent examples involves the various rabbit societies depicted in the novel, which have elicited critical interpretations almost as varied as they are numerous.

The Sandleford Warren, where the story begins, exists as a sort of aristocratic monarchy, ruled by a chief and dominated by powerful bloodlines, whose competing interests, only briefly glimpsed in the first chapter, are implied to sustain a system of informal checks and balances on their monarch’s power. Finding this environment too stifling, Hazel’s band flee Sandleford, quickly coming across a warren in which the rabbits claim to all be equals, having abolished their hierarchies of rule and turned their backs on tradition. Here, the rabbit Cowslip acts as a sort of “first among equals,” attempting to coax his guests into complacency, but the newcomers cannot shake the sense that something is wrong: individual rabbits disappear without explanation while the community as a whole pretends that they live in paradise, and the inhabitants of the warren engage in peculiar, unnatural customs while viewing the tales of El-Ahrairah and his trickery, elsewhere universally esteemed by their kind, with an amused disinterest verging on contempt.

The truth of this society—the Warren of the Shining Wire—is soon revealed: the warren lies on the property of a local human farmer, who allows the rabbits to live in a semi-natural state in order to produce more desirable meat, providing them with bountiful food to fatten them while routinely laying small numbers of snares about. Cowslip and his compatriots have chosen to abandon their independent heritage in the hopes of an easy life, deluding themselves into accepting their home as utopia and luring in others to offset the chances that they themselves will be taken.

Later on, the group comes into contact with Efrafa, a hyper-militaristic society commanded by the ruthless General Woundwort, a tyrant who suffers neither weakness nor dissent in his efforts to conceal his warren from humanity. Having personally witnessed the death of his mother at a young age, only to later narrowly survive an attempt by humans to eradicate his colony with myxomatosis, a devastating fungal infection occasionally used in controlling rabbit populations, the dictator of Efrafa goes to extreme lengths to hide his society from mankind’s eyes. He demands unquestioning obedience from his officers, regulates every aspect of the lives of his subjects, rules his kingdom on strict social Darwinist principles in order to weed out weakness, and forcibly assimilates any other warrens that his scouts discover in the vicinity.

Lastly, of course, is the warren from which the novel’s title is derived: the community built atop the heights of Watership Down, its elevation a natural defense against both predators and rival rabbits, its remoteness to human settlements ensuring that it will not suffer the same fate as Sandleford. Here, the community envisioned by Fiver and secured by his brother and compatriots flourishes as a free society built on voluntary association and mutual respect, a place in which rabbits from all of the other warrens encountered throughout the story are able to come together to build a new home.

From a certain viewpoint, the successive warrens portrayed in the novel seem to chart the course of Europe’s own turbulent political history: Sandleford as the post-feudal kingdom, stable and yet stifling to those not blessed by circumstances of birth; the Warren of the Shining Wire as a revolutionary state, casting off the constraints of tradition in pursuit of utopia only to collapse into carnage; Efrafa as the militant reaction, prizing brutal strength and the survival of the species above any concern for individual welfare; and lastly Watership Down itself as the society based on liberty and consent of the governed, where all willing to abide by their creed are free to join. This line of interpretation appears to be supported in the fates of the respective systems: Sandleford is destroyed in catastrophe after refusing to accept any measure of change, the Warren of the Shining Wire left forgotten on the ash heap of history; fascist Efrafa strikes out with the intention of implementing its vision over all competitors through violent force, only to fail when faced with the individualistic resolve of the free Down. Additionally, the ever-lingering threat of human-wrought annihilation captures Cold War-era fears of nuclear holocaust, while the fact that Woundwort’s death is never confirmed after his army’s defeat implies that tyranny can only be truly kept at bay through constant vigilance.

Despite lacking the overt focus on “racial purity” common to so many strains of fascism, Efrafa cannot help but evoke images of Nazi Germany and its imperialist allies and puppet states, while the Warren of the Shining Wire possesses a bit more room for interpretation. Its role as a temptation for Hazel’s band naturally mirrors that of The Odyssey’s isle of the lotus-eaters, and though the warren’s traits have led critics to frequently identify it with the early Soviet Union and other communist states—erasure of ties to history, supposed abolition of class distinctions, thin veneer of utopia, constant fear of family or friends disappearing—significant parallels can also be drawn with modern western society: a superficially prosperous, decadent, atomistic culture of rationalism that has abandoned the values and beliefs upon which it was erected, disdainfully treating its own founding myths as nothing more than amusing peculiarities, morbidly reveling in death as the only means of coping with its inevitability. Adams undoubtedly knew what he was doing in having the community’s celebrated poet Silverweed—who is heavily implied to share Fiver’s burden of mystic sight—deliver a fatalistic poem that takes a phrase from T.S. Eliot’s landmark work “The Waste Land,” describing a nihilistic longing for death as “the heart of light, the silence.”

However, it is with Efrafa that Adams takes time to more thoroughly explore the pathologies of totalitarianism: the fear and trauma that can drive ordinary people to become, or support, a figure like Woundwort, who offers stability and security in an often-terrifying world. Where the rabbits of Cowslip’s Warren willingly place themselves at the mercy of mankind—abandoning both heritage and legacy in the pursuit of personal fulfilment, and only managing to prolong their stagnating society’s survival by luring in newcomers to share their fate—the Efrafans veer to the opposite extreme, doing their utmost to avoid humanity, exerting as much control over the world and each other as they possibly can, never bothering to consider if a life lived in this manner is even worth the heavy toll.

The Shadow of Death

Above all else, Watership Down is a novel deeply concerned with death, something that Richard Adams himself was no stranger to. Growing up in the melancholic wake of the Great War, where so many of his neighbors had lost fathers, sons, brothers, and husbands in the killing fields of western Europe, his adolescence would be spent gradually watching the continent slip back into shadow as nation after nation was swept up in the rising tide of fascism. At the age of 19, his own university education was interrupted by Hitler’s war, and after enlisting in the British Royal Army Service Corps, he would be selected for the Airborne Company. Serving all across the globe, from the southern shore of England during the Battle of Britain to the Middle East, Italy, Northern Europe, and even the Pacific Theater, Adams remained fortunate enough to never see direct combat himself, but though he encountered his share of suffering and destruction abroad, it was his homecoming that was to prove most traumatic.

Shortly after resuming his studies at Worcester College, he learned that of more than a dozen close friends who had gone off to war, he was one of the only to have returned. Reflecting on this nearly half a century later in his memoir, The Day Gone By, Adams described it as “the worst experience of my life, and one which has altered my outlook of the world from that time to this.” With this knowledge, it is easy to see the demons of the author’s past resurfacing throughout his bibliography, from the morbid existentialism of lapine culture presented in his debut to the more overt confrontation with the problem of evil and the suffering of innocents in The Plague Dogs.

In the framing of their own mythology, the rabbits of Watership Down know that they exist to feed much of creation, attributing this to the arrogance of their beloved folk hero El-Ahrairah. While they lament their plight, it is simultaneously accepted as the divinely willed state of the world; rabbits have as much right to escape “Elil” (their term for predators) as their foes have to hunt them, a balance embodied in their god Frith’s exhortation, “Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed." In a sense, this promise acts as a twisted echo of the Abrahamic God’s commandment from Genesis to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it”—rabbits, unlike humans, view themselves not as conquerors of nature but as outlaws within it. When a rabbit dies, its companions gather around to utter a short, prayerlike incantation: “My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today.” Similarly, the concluding lines of their creation myth, passed down over generations through oral tradition, promise not salvation but a constant challenge: “All the world will be your enemy… and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you…” All rabbits know and accept that death will inevitably come for them, and the only hope for survival as a species lies in speed, cunning, and the propagation of their people.

Though Richard Adams remained adamant that Watership Down was never intended to be “about” anything other than a group of rabbits trying to find a new home, he openly drew on his own wartime experiences, and the real-world inspirations for several of the animal characters have been explicitly identified by the author: Hazel, the young rabbit thrust into leadership of a band of exiles, was modeled after his own commanding officer, whom Adams described in his memoir as initially unassuming and yet highly competent, always able to convince others to follow in his footsteps. Bigwig, the rough-and-tumble brawler, was based on a platoon sergeant who later died fending off a German advance during Operation Market Garden while his wounded squad-mates retreated to safety, while the ill-mannered-yet-stalwart gull Keehar was inspired by a Norwegian resistance fighter. These wartime inspirations serve to imbue the comradery between Hazel’s ragtag band of outcasts with an authentic sense of esprit de corps,which maps rather effectively onto the classical motifs of journeying into the unknown to find, secure, and then defend a new home.

A Monumental Legacy

With these myriad strengths, it is not difficult to see how the novel became an instant classic: within days of publication, the initial printing of 2,500 copies sold out; within a decade it was being taught in schools on both sides of the Atlantic, and had received an excellent animated film adaptation at the hands of Nepenthe Productions, complete with a star-studded cast of talented British film and stage actors. In time it would become Penguin’s highest-selling paperback ever, and by 2015 total sales would surpass 50 million copies, making it one of the most successful novels of all time. But perhaps most importantly, Adams breathed new life into a genre which had, in many ways, exhausted much of the potential of its prior confines.

The impact of Watership Down on the genre of xenofiction is so monumental as to be almost impossible to overstate: the title itself has effectively become a byword for the subgenre it birthed, and nearly all animal stories written after its publication continue to dwell in its long shadow. Adams’ debut sparked a veritable renaissance of animal literature, beginning in 1980, with the publication of William Horwood’s Duncton Wood, told from the perspective of moles rather than rabbits. Horwood and fellow Englishmen Garry Kilworth and David Clement-Davies would become some of the most prominent authors to follow in the mythic tradition begun by Adams. Stories blending naturalism and cultural anthropomorphizing have since featured species as diverse as foxes, wolves, eagles, corvids, deer, bears, cats, badgers, owls, squirrels, bats, elephants, and more. As would be expected, these successors of Watership Down vary wildly in both quality and inventiveness: Clement-Davies’ 1999 debut Fire Bringer, praised by Adams himself, sticks quite closely to the story beats of its predecessor and somewhat suffers for it, while Brian Carter’s magnificent 1981 novel A Black Fox Running, one of the earliest works to invoke Watership Down’s legacy, launches in a radically new direction; Kilworth’s 1989 book Hunter’s Moon, quite strong in its own right, treads a comfortable middle ground. Horwood’s Duncton Wood garnered enough success to spawn five sequels, and lead the author to explore stories with other species, including wolves (The Wolves of Time) and eagles (Callanish, The Stonor Eagles).

Though the surging wave of xenofiction generated by Adam’s epic would eventually subside in the mid-2000s, interest in mythic animal stories has never fully waned. Sustained by the steady growth of the furry fandom (where anthropomorphic stories naturally found an eager audience), and bolstered by increasing demand for speculative fiction among mainstream audiences across all forms of media, mythic xenofiction remains a fertile literary frontier, its vast potential—of species, cultures, and themes—far from exhausted. Even in realist animal fiction, which was rapidly eclipsed in popularity by the new subgenre, contemporary works commonly take on certain mythic aspects: Adams’ later novel The Plague Dogs features splashes of canine mythology and vulpine folklore, Henrietta Branford’s beautifully written Fire, Bed, & Bone incorporates mystic visions, and Rosanne Parry’s elegant adventure tale A Wolf Called Wander, otherwise rather lacking in cultural anthropomorphizing, imbues her wolves with religious reverence for the stars of the night sky.

Fifty Years Later

In writing Watership Down, Richard Adams crafted a novel that is both distinctly English and yet possessed of near-universal cross-cultural appeal, undoubtedly a product of its environment and yet remarkably timeless. In this, I cannot help but return to the comparisons between him and his fellow English author of speculative fiction, J.R.R. Tolkien: both saw their idyllic rural adolescences end in cataclysm—Tolkien’s with the First World War, where he would fight in the Somme, one of the deadliest battles in human history, and Adams’ with the Second, serving across the globe in the fight against Nazi tyranny—leaving them to homecomings made bitter by the loss of so many close friends. Both would launch from comfortable middle-class obscurity into international literary stardom, redefining the genres they worked within. And both, despite the suffering they endured, would remain steadfast in their faith, with Tolkien’s Catholicism and Adams’ Orthodox Christianity substantially influencing their respective magna opera without reducing either to the limitations of more explicitly religious works.

The first and final lines of Watership Down close the circle on Adams’ epic quite nicely: the opening chapter begins with the flowering primroses common to the English countryside losing their petals with the advent of summer, while the epilogue concludes with an elderly Hazel being shepherded off into death by the Black Rabbit, awarded an esteemed place within the latter’s Owsla, as the first primroses begin to bloom with a new spring. While the threat of total destruction—be it from warfare, disease, starvation, or ecological catastrophe—is never truly vanquished, Adams’ ending is undeniably a happy one: Hazel and his companions live long and prosperous lives, and their celebrated leader meets his inevitable end not in violence or fear but peaceful contentment, departing from this world knowing that his legacy is secure. As the Black Rabbit says when a reluctant Hazel gives a final wistful look to his community, “They’ll be all right, and thousands more like them.”

Richard Adams had seen and suffered much before even reaching his mid-20s, and later wrote in an era of economic vulnerability, sociopolitical upheaval, and environmental uncertainty, at a time when his own nation had only recently begun to come to terms with the failings of their past and present—all of which seem rather frighteningly familiar today. However, as bleak as the world may have then seemed to many, as deep as the scars of his own youthful experiences cut, and as grim as the tale itself gets, Watership Down is nonetheless infused with an aspirational and heroic optimism that still rings true half a century later. None of us can truly know what the next 50 years may bring, but if lovers of animal literature are treated to even a single novel whose inventiveness and grandeur matches that of Adams’ glorious debut, I dare say we will be able to count ourselves fortunate in at least one regard.

Review by Sofox

Dragon Source starts with the protagonist puking up fire for the first time. You'd think that since this book has "Dragon" in the title that this means she's about to discover she can turn into a dragon; but no, the truth is more disappointing than that.

In fact, let's tackle this right here: There is a vanishingly small amount of dragons in this book. Barely any in fact. For the vast majority of this book, you're dealing with boring humans, or maybe a human that's "implied" to be far more but still presenting as human pretty much all the time. You can easily go through half the book and not even have a clue that dragons are even part of this story's universe, unless of course you decide to read the book's title, or look at any of the cute simple black and white images that head the chapters.

Which brings us to the book's universe, setting and worldbuilding, or rather, the lack thereof.

The book has an awful habit of barely describing anything outside of where what the story is currently focused on.

The book opens in a village. Is it a big village? A small one? On a trade route? Far from a major capital city? Who knows! Absolutely no details on the starting village are ever given. Only three buildings are ever described. Arten's (the protagonist) house, Arten's neighbours' house, and the temple. That's it, I could only ever imagine the rest of the village as a haze of mist.

Even what's described doesn't fill things out much more. Arten's house has got a shop built into it. Fair enough, common design. However, to go to her neighbours' house she has to dash through a forest on a mini trek. So if her neighbour isn't right beside her, that means that her house is isolated? In which case how is the shop getting enough traffic to stay in business? I was constantly trying to fill in gaps in my knowledge that the book simply wouldn't provide. Often the nearby forest gets described more than the actual village.

And this lack of worldbuilding/setting extends to the religion. To be fair, the morsels we get at the start are perfectly serviceable. Arten, after throwing up fire, now fears that the dominant religion will now find her secret. This religion has a "fight fire with fire" approach and if they discover people who are "Tainted" they burn them at the stake. Hence Arten, a 13 year old, is now in fear of her life over keeping the secret, and yet still has to go to the Temple every Savioursday (basically Sunday) and worship a religion that wants to destroy her. No relief from her family either. Her Dad's away at a fair and her Mum clearly puts the interests of the religion before those of her own child. So there's good tension there and not hard to find real world comparisons.

The problem comes more in the details: How prominent is this religion? Why does the population support a religion that regularly burns members of its population? Is there a hierarchy to this religion? Political system? Opposition? Alternative religions? Does it make any positive contributions to society that make people more likely to overlook its bad qualities? None of these are answered. The religion feels like a shallow antagonist. Basic motivation is given in terms of the religion wanting to maintain power and killing those that have it, but none of it is fleshed out to make it feel like a genuine organisation. Even its own history is rarely elaborated on, which is annoying since the protagonist has been going to the temple every week of her life. Surely she'd be able to tell us more of the religion's history. Instead all we get are some basic scraps about "five saviours" and a betrayal and that's it. Religions are a lot of things, but generally they have narratives that are straightforward enough to grasp to be passed down through several generations. We're not even getting that.

Fantasy books without strong worldbuilding can work, but the pressure then falls on the character and the story and that's where things get tricky.

Once again, it starts well. We learn of Arten, of how her mother seems emotionally abusive towards her with a priest-like person from the temple siding with her Mum, how she has trouble quelling the fire in her gut which she fear  will get noticed, how this seems to be a setting where she doesn't have a choice in who she is married off to, and how she's now expected to look after the shop while her father and brother are away at the fair. We also learn of her neighbours, who have two kids she interacts with in different ways. One of whom is like a sister to her, the other of whom she used to be tight with until he distanced himself from her in a way that broke her heart. This person is Juro, and his character and the relationship he has with Arten are the most developed and nuanced we get in the whole book. And so this is about how the first third of the book goes, interaction between all these characters, Arten having all these struggles and learning to try to overcome them, some victories among them too. It's interesting enough.

Then of course, Artens worst fears about being found out come to pass, and she becomes a fugitive.

While Arten desperately having to leave all she's ever known does have tension, especially at first, the problem is that a lot of stuff built up in the first third of the book abruptly breaks. For instance, at the start I thought the constant abuse she was receiving from her mother would give her mental issues she had to overcome. You know: lack of confidence, guilt, feeling others are more worthy of life than she is, so on... but no, once she's on the run her mother becomes "out of sight, out of mind." There is no struggle against her mother's influence or bad lessons she may have learned from her; she just seems to leave all that stuff behind her when she leaves her village.

Another thing that gets left behind is the religion's influence. You'd think since she's a fugitive now the constant presence of the religion constantly gaining on her would be a source of continuing tension and story, but no, that whole aspect gets dropped shockingly early into Arten's escape.

There's a decent effort with trying to continue the element of Arten's relationship with Juro, but obviously it's hard since the two can't talk to each other anymore.

So what's left? Well pretty much just Arten and a complete stranger making their way through a bunch of safe houses.

The stranger is Stekin, and it's his relationship with Arten that forms the foundation of the rest of the book. Unfortunately, it's a weak foundation. Once again, it starts fine enough. Arten is weary of this stranger, questions his motives, wants to know what he wants with her belly fire, asks about where they are going. He responds with half answers which Arten doesn't fully trust, but decides she has no choice but to go along with him. This guarded uncertainty is a good way to start. Unfortunately, their relationship continues to stay exactly like this as they continue to travel together, often rediscussing the same topics over and over again with scraps of new information being revealed at a glacial rate and nothing that affects their overall goal. Their relationship seems to barely progress at all despite a huge amount of time and pages spent on it. Meanwhile, it's hard to feel any progress in their physical journey either. We the reader have been given no overall description of the geography, political layout or anything of the lands our heroes are going through. Like Arten we are stumbling blindly from safe house to safe house.

To be fair, the safe house network is kinda interesting, probably the most novel item in the book's setting. Basically, a series of isolated houses are secretly members of this network. Fugitives like Arten arrive at one such house, get a meal and a place to stay for the night, and next morning get directions for the next house. So on and so forth until their final destination. There is concern that not every node of this network is operating as it should since more fugitives are going in than coming out, and it's an interesting intrigue. It gives suspense since Arten isn't guaranteed safety going through this network, it develops her relationship with Stekin because he's her only backup if things go wrong, and it helps define Arten's character because she voluntarily decided to do this so others following behind her wouldn't be at risk.

It's good stuff, the problem is that that's all that's left of the book. This fugitive journey would have made a good middle part of the book. Instead, it pretty much comprises of the entire remainder of it. This means we spend the majority of the book journeying to a place we never get a proper look at.

There's a lot of stuff that could have been done to make the journey more interesting. Maybe if Stekin had given Arten lessons on controlling her belly fire so it doesn't randomly immolate her, or if Stekin had started regaling Arten tales from his long life that would help us learn more about him and the setting. But no, Stekin is one of those taciturn characters that rarely properly answers questions or reveals more about what's going on. This annoys Arten, but also the reader.

As for how our protagonist develops, when you look closely you can see Arten getting slightly stronger, but just like the plot, it's spread super thin over a huge amount of pages. Two people on a journey can make a compelling story, but not when they have the same conversations and events over and over again and barely anything seems to progress.

What really kills this book for me is that the characters and setting feel very shallow. The book never dives into anything of substance, a character never defies expectation (save Juro), things are nearly always what they seem to be at first glance, no major revelations that make you rethink things, and that's a death knell for a fantasy book that thrives on engaging your curiosity.

Of course, now I have to discuss the elephant in the room. The fact it has "Book 1" in the title, and yes, a sequel has already been released. So maybe all the revelations I yearn for are in the second book and the writer has just been holding back. Maybe that's where I can get more character interaction, setting development and dragons. If so, that just makes me more annoyed. I spent a bunch of time reading a book and I didn't get a full story out of it. If there's better stuff in Book 2, then either the story should have started with Book 2, or Book 1 should have been compressed down with the best parts of Book 2 added afterward. For all I know Book 2 might just give me a bunch of more disappointments that I'm expected to wait for Book 3 to get more development on, and so on and so forth. It doesn't help that after an entire book I'm still not sure what sort of journey Arten is on or where it may lead; the story could easily leap to a different track like it did right after Arten left home.

To be fair, the prose and moment-to-moment writing itself is fine. It's always clear what's going on; characters are very clearly described. Dialogue is good too, very easy to get the vibe of the characters as they speak and the flow of conversation, even if some conversations are repetitive. There's some nice nature scenes too. If something is focused on, you get a good sense of what it's about, it's only stuff on the periphery that's left maddeningly indistinct.

Overall Dragon Source is a book that really does drag-on. Wearing the sins of a "Book 1" fantasy, we get too little spread over too many pages. We get a perfectly serviceable beginning followed by a massive sequence that's largely about building up to the next book. There are things this book needs more of: More character depth, more story, more resolution and more worldbuilding. Also more dragons. Can't have too many dragons.

Review by Domus Vocis

Separated into a few interconnected stories taking place nearly two-hundred years apart, “Toledot” is the sequel to Madison Scott-Clary’s furry science fiction novel, “Qoheleth”.

One story revolves around the System—basically a future version of the Internet—historian from the first novel, Ioan Bălan (pronouns are ey, eir, em), who returns twenty years later to visit the Ode Clade as everybody online prepares for the Launch. Basically, the Launch is an event where two massive server satellites called Castor and Pollux, both of which contain exact copies of the System, are to be hurled out beyond the Solar System with the assumed intention of preserving post-human life and/or contacting extraterrestrial life. Many in the System make different irreversible choices regarding the Launch; some choose to simply make forked copies of themselves to be on all three Systems, others decide to simply transfer to either Castor or Pollux, knowing they’d never see Earth again while spending eons in outer space, and some conduct artistic experiments with this experience while some simply ‘quit’ with the belief it doesn’t matter. During which, Ioan decides to work alongside May Then My Name of the Odist Clade in forming a historical record on their origin and what led to them not only being created, but how the Clade itself influenced the System’s creation in unexpected ways.

Another story set during this follows a technician named Douglas Hadje, who happens to be a collateral descendant (a relative descended from the sibling of an ancestor) of the Ode Clade’s original founder, Michelle Hadje, while also being the Launch director of Castor and Pollux. Amusingly, he isn’t unaware one of the coordinators working alongside him is a forked version of his immortal relative and is in regular contact with both Ioan and May Then My Name in getting a better sense of life on Earth.

Lastly, Yared Zerezghi, a lone activist in the 2124 who regularly campaigns for the individual rights of those uploaded to the earliest version of the System. One day, he’s approached by a mysterious politician who wants him to not only push harder for these rights, but even promote the idea of the System literally seceding as its own political entity from world governments. This idea is not only promoted by the politician but catches the interest of the Council of Eight (the System’s closest thing to a governmental body with actual members, one of whom is the Odist Clade’s root founder). As events unfold and secrets are revealed, Yared finds himself embroiled in a political landscape split between the digital world and the real world.

Readers who haven’t read the first novel will find themselves thrust into a puzzling and jumbled novel. They will find the setting intriguing but struggle to understand the decisions of the characters and understand why they are secretive of their pasts. They will also be extremely confused on some of the terminologies until a good chunk of the way in. However, those who have read “Qoheleth” before reading “Toledot” will be in for a grand, emotionally turbulent adventure that continues off from where the first novel started.

Much like its predecessor, “Toledot” is a surreal and epic science fiction story that explores philosophical questions regarding concepts like digital self vs. living self, individuality, personality, freedom of expression and what defines a human being. What separates “Toledot” from its predecessor though is showing the reader the consequences of such questions being answered and eventually embraced.

Without going too much into spoilers, the beginning of the novel can seem padded, and the chapters feel chronologically out of place, yet these are extremely minimal reasons not to read. “Toledot” creates a setting that feels incredibly believable with characters who feel as equally believable. Where the first book simply mentioned the System as something being in the background while having Ioan be in one location, here the reader’s allowed to travel it. Not only that, but the reader also sees two or even three different versions of the System, one taking place in 2325 in the novel’s present, but in the past of 2124 when uploaded individuals are still testing the limits of what the System can do. It is genuinely fascinating to read about how much avirtual reality can change across time, from the rules of what someone can do to how much it affects society. It feels akin to seeing an earliest version of the Internet and knowing how much it is integrated into every aspect of daily life.

Madison Scott-Clary pushes this further as the plot progresses, when the reader’s allowed to see how characters from “Qoheleth” were changed by what previously happened, and we get a further study the psychological aspects of being digitally uploaded. We get to see how a broken or lonely individual is changed by their new form, either figuratively or literally when they decide to create copies of themselves who can either last a few moments or be allowed to ‘fork’ off from their root branch to be their own person. Remember the Shadow Clone Jutsu from “Naruto”? Imagine that in a digital landscape. The biggest elements to showcase this are in the character Codrin, and his connection with Ioan, as well as with the Ode Clade’s legacy.

What makes the Ode Clade itself such a brilliant concept revolves around its surviving members. Every member is not only sentient, but has their own autonomy, differing appearances and personality traits while still resembling the root founder one way or another. Madison Scott-Clary’s talent as an author shines through in how each forked instance of an uploaded individual, be they Odist or someone of another Clade, has their own unique identity. One could be human while the other either a feral fox or an anthropomorphic skunk. One could be female, male, or neither at all. One could be more confident in themselves and act more professionally while another might be more romantic and care-free. The ideas touched on and questions asked are reminiscent of those talked about in video games such as “Soma”, and in some episodes of “Black Mirror”.

Beyond the System, Yared in the past and Douglas in the future help the reader explore the world barely given a glimpse of in “Qoheleth”. We’re given a sense of how divided the political landscape is and what the System offers to human beings who are tired of the famines, crumbling economies, severe climate change and more. Without diving too deeply into it though, Madison Scott-Clary gives the reader a taste of why ignorance/abandonment towards real-life can be a dangerous path to trek on. When the idealists and brightest minds all migrate to a realm we cannot see, what do you think happens to human civilization? However, there’s still the reminder by the end of the novel that the System’s inhabitants are as flawed as the people living outside of it. They can be selfish and have their own agendas, yet still have empathy for those around them.

Overall, “Toledot” is a science fiction novel that not only continues from where “Qoheleth” left off but improves on it like any sequel should. It is a philosophical adventure taking place across time, space, and identities. The beginning opens up the mind to what is possible for virtual reality in the future while the epilogue leaves this reader incredibly excited for more.