Anthropomorphized canine-centric SF, not as whimsical as it initially seems—this dog hunts.
In Gephardt’s SF novel, a pack of genetically enhanced, intelligent police dogs investigate sabotage on their adopted space station.
The author here continues the SF trilogy launched with What’s Bred in the Bone (2019). In the future, humankind has taken to the stars in the “Human Diaspora.” The most powerful colony-empire, the Transmondians, has developed—among other weapon and surveillance technologies—the “XK9,” a genetically modified police dog with superior size, intellect, and, via an electronic translator/vocalizer, the ability to speak. Still, the profiteering Transmondians considered them mere property, law-enforcement tools, when 10 XK9s were sold to the large, autonomous space-station called Rana. Charlie Morgan, a police detective, partners with XK9 leader Rex (full name: Rex Dieter-Nell). The two even share neuro-linked thoughts, and they earn celebrity when the progressive Ranans grant the XK9 pack full legal rights and recognition as sentient beings. The situation is fraught as this sequel begins: The dogs, especially Rex, were abused in the brutal Transmondian equivalent of boot camp, and Charlie lies mangled in a clinic after saving a number of people in a spaceship breach that was no accident. Rex must protect his pack (including his mate Shady) as vengeful secret agents of the Transmondians infiltrate Rana. Charlie, meanwhile, recovers via radical technological regeneration and augmentation, which reshapes him into a “semi-SuperCop” dogged by emotional side-effects. Two previous women in his life have deserted him; will Charlie do better with Hildie, the exotic nurse who has been attracted to him for years? (“The old magic was still there. Still there, and stronger than ever.”) The initially unpromising premise of talking-dog-cops-of-tomorrow is redeemed by the author taking the material seriously. No poochie-cute comedy or proud-pet-owner or furry-fetish stuff here—just solid SF police drama (even if the mystery aspect is cursory) with an emphasis on workplace relationships, jurisdictional conflicts, emotional bonds, and various feuds. (A number of these cops happen to be not human, that’s all.) Gephardt engagingly conveys the four-footed perspective of minds and routines shaped by scent communication, pack mentality and predator-pursuit instinct, intriguingly suggesting that the spacefaring human cultures have shaped their own societies into structures not unlike dog packs.
Anthropomorphized canine-centric SF, not as whimsical as it initially seems—this dog hunts.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 9781950748044
Page Count: 582
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.
A 16-year-old savant uses his Groundhog Day gift to solve his grandfather’s murder.
Nishizawa’s compulsively readable puzzle opens with the discovery of the victim, patriarch Reijiro Fuchigami, sprawled on a futon in the attic of his elegant mansion, where his family has gathered for a consequential announcement about his estate. The weapon seems to be a copper vase lying nearby. Given this setup, the novel might have proceeded as a traditional whodunit but for two delightful features. The first is the ebullient narration of Fuchigami’s youngest grandson, Hisataro, thrust into the role of an investigator with more dedication than finesse. The second is Nishizawa’s clever premise: The 16-year-old Hisataro has lived ever since birth with a condition that occasionally has him falling into a time loop that he calls "the Trap," replaying the same 24 hours of his life exactly nine times before moving on. And, of course, the murder takes place on the first day of one of these loops. Can he solve the murder before the cycle is played out? His initial strategies—never leaving his grandfather’s side, focusing on specific suspects, hiding in order to observe them all—fall frustratingly short. Hisataro’s comical anxiety rises with every failed attempt to identify the culprit. It’s only when he steps back and examines all the evidence that he discovers the solution. First published in 1995, this is the first of Nishizawa’s novels to be translated into English. As for Hisataro, he ultimately concludes that his condition is not a burden but a gift: “Time’s spiral never ends.”
A fresh and clever whodunit with an engaging twist.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781805335436
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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