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Tag: Spiders

May 4, 2017

The Earth Tigers, by Frances Pauli – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

The Earth Tigers, by Frances Pauli
Moses Lake, WA, Gastropod Press, February 2017, trade paperback $7.99 (165 pages), Kindle $0.99.

The Earth Tigers is Star Spiders, Volume One. Pauli considers it to be s-f, not furry, but it has talking spiders in it. Volume Two, tentatively titled Sky Fires, will be published in 2018.

The Earth Tigers is dedicated:
For all the eight-legged beauties, big and small.
Without them, we’d live in a much less friendly
environment.

Unfortunately for reviewing, The Earth Tigers begins in the midst of deliberate confusion and only gradually reveals what is going on. So any traditional plot synopsis would be full of spoilers.

It starts with a spider, Horatch, who is looking for a human to become a “candidate”. He (there is a reason for him to be a male rather than a female spider) choses Milyi, a young girl alone in a forest.

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February 4, 2016

Amphibians’ End: A Kulipari Novel – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.

Amphibians’ End: A Kulipari Novel, by Trevor Pryce with Joel Naftali. Illustrated by Sanford Greene.
NYC, Abrams/Amulet Books, October 2015, hardcover $15.95 ([5 +] 291 [+ 3] pages), Kindle $10.49.

Here is the conclusion of this rousing Young Adult trilogy of warfare between the defending poisonous frogs of the Amphibilands and the invading arachnids of the Outback desert. “Frogs and Platypuses versus Scorpions and Spiders”, says the caption in the full-color list of characters.

In An Army of Frogs and The Rainbow Serpent, the first and second volumes of this novel in three parts, teenage frog warrior Darel and his friend Gurnugan (Gee) find themselves facing all the adventure they have ever wanted when the desert spider and scorpion armies unite under the latter’s power-mad leader, Lord Marmoo, to invade the lush green Amphibilands. Darel had always wanted to become a Kulipari warrior, one of the band of legendary invincible defenders of the Amphibilands. But the Kulipari had all disappeared a generation ago.

When the endless scorpion armies reappear out of the desert, and Gee is captured, Darel thinks that the Amphibilands’ only hope of salvation is to find where the Kulipari have vanished to and persuade them to return. The Rainbow Serpent introduces little Pippi of the platypus village and her search to find the mysterious frog warrior Darel, whom their elderly seer has had a vision of as being their savior. The book mixes Pippi’s adventures with Darel’s own with the Kulipari. He’s found them – but unfortunately they aren’t as invincible as legend has built them up to be. Can Darel’s joining them restore them to greatness?