Moth and Rust, by Eddie Drueding – Fred Patten’s book review.
by Patch O'Furr
Submitted by Fred Patten, Furry’s favorite historian and reviewer.
Moth and Rust, by Eddie Drueding.
White Bear Lake, MN, Melange Books, August 2014, trade paperback $13.95 ([4] + 190 [+ 5] pages).
This is Arraborough Book 3, following the 2012 Book 1, The Unimaginable Road and the 2013 Book 2, The Darkness. It will be followed by Book 4, Revelation.
Eddie Drueding’s Arraborough series, featuring his idealistic anthropomorphized animal community and the mysterious and ominous forces that oppose it, moves on to its third annual volume. If you have read the first two, get it! If you haven’t, try The Unimaginable Road first. Arraborough is not for everyone.
The comments that I made on Book 2 are even more true for Book 3. There is a two-page “The Story So Far …” that is so brief as to be more confusing than enlightening. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with all the large cast. Drueding’s habit of writing in the present tense (the story begins abruptly, “Pimlico bends down, gathers Dovan’s dead body in his arms, and rises. They remain in that position for a long moment, the cat simply too stunned to move, stunned not least of all by the very weight of Dovan in his arms, a lightness he can only feel unfitting to being the only remaining testimony to all that Dovan had been in life.”) is offputting at first. The reader may still be caught in a “Wait a minute; WHAT!?” moment from the discovery of the ancient spaceship at the climax of Book 2. Even readers familiar with the story may want to refresh their memories- it’s been a year since Book 2 was published. What animals, again, are Tust and Fespin?
For those not exposed to Euro media… 
Dear Patch;
When people become stuffed animals (Wenn Menschen zu Plüschtieren werden)