The narrative follows S.T. the domesticated crow and his intellectually challenged bloodhound sidekick Dennis on their epic quest to find any lingering humanity and to save as many of the domesticated animals as possible. The prose is moving and lyrical, despite the horrific descriptions (there are formerly human zombies). There is panoramic and profound violence and despite the descriptive power of the author, and her ability to horrify, it was a joy to read. The actual dichotomy between the perfect writing and *what* was being described often lifted the whole to a new level. This book was really genuinely funny in a lot of places.
It's mostly set in Seattle, and the sense of place and description of well known landmarks in that area gave the book verisimilitude. There are chapters set in other places with other narrators and those are well delineated in the chapter headings. The author did a superlative job of altering the narrative voice of the narrators so it wasn't difficult to follow at all. The technical writing is to an impressively high standard
I generally actively dislike horror and zombies. This one combines both with actively gross bodily functions (farts, diarrhea, vomiting, dismemberment, other body horror). Despite this, it was one of my year's best reads. This is a cautionary tale which manages to do so without being preachy or strident. It's an epic quest fantasy, and it's a good one.
As a debut novel, Ms. Buxton knocked it out of the ball park. Kudos to her agent and editor for recognizing her skills with novel length fiction. I would recommend this to any fiction readers (with the violence and language warnings taken into consideration). Because it's impossible to categorize, I hope it gets a much wider readership than just horror or speculative lit. I was drawn in from the first paragraph and read it in one sitting. (I just wrote "devoured" and couldn't bear to leave it there).
Five stars.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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