Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Opinion

May 13, 2016

The Guardian Herd: Landfall, by Jennifer Lynn Alvarez – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

51uiY0PYthL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_The Guardian Herd: Landfall, by Jennifer Lynn Alvarez. Illustrated by David McClellan; maps.
NYC, HarperCollinsPublishers/Harper, February 2016, hardcover $16.99 ([xvi +] 328 [+ 4] pages), Kindle $9.99.

The adventure grows more desperate in this third volume of The Guardian Herd saga. It might be described as a My Little Pony with savage teeth and razor-sharpened hooves in it.

The multicolored flying pegasi of Anok are divided into five rival herds that the young Starfire has been trying to bring together peacefully. As he said in The Guardian Fire: Starfire, first novel in the series, when the over-stallion of another herd proposed making an alliance and forcing the other herds to join them, “But that’s not uniting; that’s conquering.” The Guardian Herd: Stormwind, the second novel, ends with Star learning that Nightwing the Destroyer, the crazed, all-powerful black stallion of 400 years ago, is flying back to Anok to conquer the herds and kill him. But the five herds are still fighting among each other; Star is still untrained; and Star fears that he may turn as crazed and deadly as Nightwing is.

Landfall begins, not counting a dramatis personae of 40 important pegasi, with a 16-page battle to the death between Nightwing and Starfire. And Star dies! Horribly (but not too horribly; this is a Young Adult book). He’s saved by a ghostly deus ex machina that tries to make us believe that he wasn’t really dead, y’know, just in an exceptionally deep suspended animation.

Umm … no. Sorry; this isn’t believable. I’ll buy the talking, flying horses, but I won’t buy Starfire being not really dead. He’s killed too definitely, and his salvation by the equivalent of Tinker Bell showing up and waving her magic wand is too cheesy. It further destroys the suspense by showing that whatever hardships Star suffers in the future at the hooves of Nightwing, if they get too bad we can expect an unexpected deus ex machina to bring him back to life.

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May 12, 2016

Neighbors, by Michael H. Payne – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

5132WJOdC0L._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_Neighbors, by Michael H. Payne
Balboa, CA, “Hey, Your Nose is on Fire” Industries, October 2014, trade paperback $10.00 (212 pages), Kindle $3.00.

August Lancer, the narrator, is a young resident of Haven Space, a sanatorium and rehabilitation clinic in Southern California. Dumped there by his father (who sends expense money but never visits), Gus is a loner in a wheelchair, afflicted by a degenerative condition that has paralyzed him from the waist down and made it almost impossible to talk. His only pleasure is watching a TV cartoon series about ponies.

This all changes when Gus is adopted by a hospital therapy black cat named Spooky, who tells him that her name is really El Brujo.

“‘El Brujo?’ I heard myself ask with words that weren’t words. ‘But … you’re female. Aren’t you?’

Another little smile. ‘I’m a bit of a trendsetter.’” (p. 19)

Gus finds himself able since her appearance to talk with the other animals and birds around him. Serena the squirrel. Jefe the crow and his flock. The sparrows who nest just outside the window. Nobody else notices anything unusual, even when El Brujo and Jefe dance together, so Gus worries about it.

“Another thought hit me hard, then, one that I’d tried my absolute damnedest over and over the last bunch of months to stop myself from thinking: what if El Brujo and Serena and the sparrows and crows this morning and the weird little voices I heard in the trees and bushes out in the neighborhood –

What if it was all in my head? What if the shredded chunks of my nervous system weren’t making me understand the animals but were instead making me imagine I could understand them? Was it just a matter of time before rows of dancing chipmunks were telling me to set things on fire and kill people?” (p. 31)

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May 11, 2016

Fursonas documentary out now – one of the top Furry News stories of the year.

by Patch O'Furr

Here’s one of those media events where a story catches on and gets a lot of coverage at once.  That used to happen very rarely.  Now it’s happening every month or so in 2016, “The Year of Furry.”  The director, Dominic (Video Wolf) is killing it with interviews and promotion.

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May 10, 2016

Black Angel, by Kyell Gold – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

BlackAngelFrontCoverBlack Angel, by Kyell Gold. Illustrated by Rukis.
St. Paul, MN, Sofawolf Press, March 2016, trade paperback $19.95 (vii + 379 pages).

Black Angel is the conclusion of Kyell Gold’s Dangerous Spirits trilogy that began with Green Fairy (March 2012) and continued with Red Devil (January 2014). The three novels are a powerful mixture of spiritualism, drugs, and adolescent angst, shifting between centuries and societies. They are also set in Gold’s larger Forester University anthropomorphic-animal alternate universe, with clear parallels to our own. Each of these three is complete, but assuming you will like Black Angel enough to want to read the others, readers are recommended to start all three from the first.

Solomon Wrightson (black wolf), Alexei Tsarev (red fox), and Meg Kinnick (otter) are three very troubled seniors at Vidalia’s Richfield High School. All three have left home. Sol, who has just realized that he is gay, is constantly nagged at home by his father to excel at sports. Alexei, who has come from Siberia on a student visa, is concerned by the silence of his sister back home; he is sure that their parents are intercepting their mail. The mannish Meg has gotten her parents to let her move into a decrepit apartment to be an artist. Her apartment has become a social center for the three. Sol’s traveling into the past in Green Fairy, and Alexei’s being haunted by a ghost in Red Devil, may be due to external causes in those novels, or – as the rational Meg scoffs – it’s all in their imagination.

“Hi. I’m Meg. I’m nineteen, and I’m fucked up.

That’s not a big secret, by the way. Pretty much anyone who knew me from about fifteen to now would tell you the same thing. Only back then I thought it was a good kind of fucked up.” (p. 1)

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May 4, 2016

DreamKeepers, Volume 4, Descent to the Archives, by David & Liz Lille – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

514FCHz6XFL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_DreamKeepers, volume 4, Descent to the Archives, by David & Liz Lille
Monroe, MI, Vivid Independent Publishing, July 2015, trade paperback $24.99 (117 [+ 11] pages).

“Dreamkeepers is a supernatural fantasy adventure series for teens and up.” (publishers’ advisory)

After two years and an incredibly successful Kickstarter campaign, here is DreamKeepers, volume 4, Descent to the Archives, containing Chapters 10 through 12. By now, so much has happened that you have to first read What Has Gone Before; either page-by-page for free on the DreamKeepers website or as albums from Amazon.com.

To rephrase what I have said in my reviews of the first three volumes, “The Dreamworld is a mysterious reality that parallels our own,” inhabited by funny-animal DreamKeepers, one for each person in the world. They guard us from the nightmares that would drive us mad. “Everyone’s DreamKeeper is completely unique – your personality and subconscious influence your DreamKeeper’s appearance and abilities.” Since there are now over seven billion people in the world, that’s a lot of almost-all different funny animals; but David Lillie has shown in large crowd scenes that he can draw that many DreamKeepers. Most DreamKeepers live in “Anduruna, the largest DreamKeeper city in the DreamWorld.”

“The protagonist is Mace, a young puppy (or is he a kitten?) in Grunn’s orphanage, a Dickensian hellhole along Anduruna’s eastern seacoast. Mace, the equivalent of a ten- or eleven-year-old human boy, is always getting in trouble for his practical jokes. He doesn’t care that he makes it easy for the orphanage’s real troublemakers to blame their tricks on him. But when his best friend is brutally murdered and he is blamed, he is forced to flee with Whip, his little blue companion (don’t call him a pet) into Anduruna’s lower-class throngs. There he meets Lilith Calah, a female counterpart from the aristocracy’s elite Sabbaton Towers who has just escaped a murder attempt (with the help of her half-sister, Namah) that apparently is connected to a black magic plot (and believe me; Dave & Liz can draw really gory and frightening black magic!) by the Dark DreamKeepers to overthrow the DreamKeepers and bring the nightmare hordes into the ascendency.”

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May 3, 2016

Children of Steel and Interregnum, by John Van Stry – Book Reviews by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

41yvBNmOuCL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_Children of Steel, by John Van Stry.
North Charleston, SC, CreateSpace, February 2012, trade paperback $12.99 (350 pages), Kindle $3.99.

Interregnum, by John Van Stry.
North Charleston, SC, CreateSpace, May 2015, trade paperback $9.99 (198 pages), Kindle $2.99.

John Van Stry first came to the notice of furry fandom with the story “Changes” in Yarf! #51, December 1997. But he began writing before that under the pen name of Banner Von Trippen, with “Waiting for Shadamehr (or Someone Like Him)” in Yarf! #49, July 1997. His serialized Dialene, beginning in Yarf! #64, April 2002, under the Von Trippen name, featured a foxmorph living in his Children of Steel universe. Since then he has been publishing through CreateSpace under his real name. Most of his stories have been published as science fiction, not furry fiction, even when they feature anthropomorphic animals.

Children of Steel is set in a familiar-to-furries future. To quote its rear cover, “Raj is just your average everyday genetically modeled and artificially created anthropomorphic worker for one of the many corporations of the future. Extensively trained and conditioned from birth he’s now indentured for the next fifty years of his life; assuming he doesn’t die first, or somehow manage to pay off his creation and training debts. Created by the corporations to deal with the harsh labor shortages of the twenty second century when humans will no longer take on the dangerous jobs Raj finds himself now in the harsh world of space exploration, trading, corporate maneuverings, and sometimes the even more dangerous fanatics that hate Raj and his fellows.”

Raj Rakir is “‘a sentient leopard-man of .7 human norm on the Rourstat scale,’” created by the Tri-Star Mining and Manufacturing corporation. He is presented “‘with your bill for creation and training by the corporation. As covered in the created species act of 2069 you must now work for above said corporation until you have either paid this bill, or completed a term of 50 years indentured servitude.’” (p. 4) The bill comes to three-plus million new dollars. Even with an expected lifespan of a hundred years – assuming he isn’t killed in one of those dangerous space jobs first – Raj can expect to spend most of his life working for Tri-Star. But he’s not worried about it.

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April 28, 2016

Learning to Go, by Friday Donnelly – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

51o45qvTn8L._SX312_BO1,204,203,200_Learning to Go, by Friday Donnelly.
Capalaba, Queensland, Australia, Jaffa Books, May 2015, trade paperback $15.00 ([2] + 191 pages), Kindle $5.00.

Learning to Go was published by Jaffa Books in Australia for FurDU 2015 in Gold Coast, Queensland on May 1-3. It is also sold by AnthroAquatic in the U.S; hence the price in U.S. dollars and the Amazon Kindle edition.

Readers had better consider Learning to Go to be R- or NC-17-rated. It is about two homosexual men and a male prostitute who are only thinly-disguised as anthropomorphic animals. There is considerable explicit sex description and talk.
Rufus Timberly is a young man (tiger) as the submissive in a dominator/submissive relationship with his boyfriend, Victor (lion). He is unhappy that Victor is turning out to be the dom in more than their bedroom trysts.

“Rufus wished now that he hadn’t switched jobs. He had been offered the position by his boyfriend, who claimed the office could use some competent people. That should have been a warning sign. In a remarkably short time, Victor stopped seeing him as competent and started seeing him as just as bad as everyone else.” (p. 5)

After a dinner date during which Vincent publicly berates him and walks out, leaving Rufus stuck with the cheque, Rufus turns to a commercial online gay prostitute for sexual release.

“He decided to bite the bullet and search the internet for, ‘Dom in Holton.” Searching for one didn’t commit him to hiring them, he figured. After such an exhausting day, his better judgment was too tired to convince him he shouldn’t.

The results surprised him. Hundreds of relevant hits appeared. Some were craigslist ads, others professional websites. The websites confused him at first; all billed themselves as ‘non-sexual.’ Rufus couldn’t understand why a non-sexual dom existed, and why anyone hired them. Then he realized through a bit more searching that it was a lie, so that the sites appeared strictly legal.” (p. 8)

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April 27, 2016

The Forges of Dawn, by E. M. Kinsey – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Pup Matthias

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

51vY45oQPbL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_The Forges of Dawn, by E. M. Kinsey
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, September 2014, trade paperback $18.50 ([3] + 480 [+ 1] pages), Kindle $9.99.

“In a world where lions evolved and man did not… An epic adventure begins” (blurb)

“The stories are focused around the felines of our world, but mostly around Lyons of Afriik. It takes place on an alternate world where humans have been hunted to extinction, allowing other animals to thrive and grow after they learn how to master and create fire.” (The Iron Lyons Wiki)

The Forges of Dawn, Book 1 of the “Iron Lyons” series, is the first novel in this series. But E. M. Kinsey has been developing the world of Afriik and its Lyons for a long time. Her Wiki cites both this novel and several other short stories and comic stories such as “Escape”, “Unbroken”, “The Lady of Snow”, “Vicious Circle”, and others. Some are published on DeviantArt, some on Patreon, and some are still unpublished. Her Patreon page describes the forthcoming The Road to Ruin: An Iron Lyons Novella Collection; three novellas still to be written.

Briefly, there are many tribes of Lyons in Afriik, but two main groupings; the Refugees including the deep red Barbari Lyons, spread across what would be North Africa in our world, and the Pale Ones, ruling most of the rest of the continent. (The southern tip of Afriik is the Hynar or hyena Territories.)

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April 26, 2016

Anubis: Dark Desire – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

anubis-dark-desire-featuring-the-art-of-heather-bruton-dark-nata-204825Anubis: Dark Desire
St. Paul, MN, Sofawolf Press, September 2015, hardcover $59.95, softcover $39.95 (189 pages).

Anubis: Dark Desire is intended for an adult audience only and contains explicit sexual material. It will not be for sale to persons under the age of 18. (publisher’s advisory)

Anubis: Dark Desire began as an adults-only comic book published by Radio Comix under its Sin Factory label in June 2002. It contained stories and stand-alone pages featuring the anthropomorphic animals and gods of Egyptian mythology, mainly Anubis, the black-furred, jackal-headed god of the dead, having erotic encounters. The short comic-book stories were by many of the most prominent artists in furry fandom: Dark Natasha, Heather Bruton, Sara “Caribou” Palmer, Terrie Smith, Diana Harlan Stein, and Michele Light. The black-&-white comic book was extremely popular, running for four biannual issues to June 2008.

There was an immediate demand from the furry fandom for somebody, anybody, to publish a collection of the four issues. Sofawolf Press announced that it would, but not in a black-&-white comic-book format. Sofawolf would contact the artists to get their permissions, and their collaborations to produce a full-color, high-quality volume. It took over six years. On March 6, 2015 Sofawolf announced a Kickstarter campaign to raise $18,000 to produce such a book. It reached its goal by March 15. By the time the one-month Kickstarter ended on April 5, Sofawolf Press had $32,413 from 413 backers. The additional money was used to commission 17 new pages by Dark Natasha and Heather Bruton (plus appropriate bonuses that only the backers got such as stickers, lapel pins, shot glasses, and T- and bowling shirts).

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April 25, 2016

Krazy Kat: A Novel in Five Panels, by Jay Cantor – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

5fee024128a0dab587e09010.LKrazy Kat: A Novel in Five Panels, by Jay Cantor. Illustrated by George Herriman.
NYC, A. A. Knopf, January 1988, hardcover $16.95 ([x] + 245 + [viii] pages).

The reviews for this unauthorized (since it was written long after Herriman’s death) sequel to George Herriman’s classic Krazy Kat comic strip, all praise how imaginative it is. But they use terminology like “an elaborate intellectual game”, “post-narrative techniques”, “Psychoanalysis, Hollywood, radical politics, television, popular and high art are all grist for Cantor’s satirical mill”, “an X-rated sort-of-sequel to the comic strip”, and “simultaneously maddening, shocking, funny and quite disturbing.” It is, in short, an absurdist, post-modernist novel that carries the cast of the gentle (despite Ignatz’s constant bopping of Krazy’s bean with a brick), isolated Kokonino Kounty into the full complexity of modern civilization.

Cartoonist George Herriman died on April 25, 1944. The Alamogordo test explosion of the atomic bomb was on July 16, 1945. Despite the bomb blast being in the wrong state and over a year later, it is Cantor’s postulate that it was Krazy Kat’s traumatization by the atomic bomb that was responsible for the comic strip’s disappearance.

“Krazy’s unexpected retirement has put the entire cast out of work: KWAKK WAKK, the gossipy duck who sang out Coconino’s dirty linen, has no one to tattle on. JOE STORK, a lean decent creature who brought the babies and the mail from Outside, is a nearly dead letter man, for fickle fans no longer want to get in touch. DON KIYOTI, native-born long-eared snob, lacks an audience to lord it over. BEAU KOO JACK, the black rabbit of thumping paws, finds fancy trade falling off at his grocery store. KOLIN KELLEY, who fired the bricks that Ignatz threw, cleans and recleans his cold kiln, knowing that if Krazy never works again he is cursed king of useless rocks. And MRS. MICE, Ignatz’s big-footed spouse, with MILTON, MARSHALL and IRVING, her Joe-delivered progeny, bicker pointlessly, Dad out of work and time on their hands.

Why did Krazy, they wonder, suddenly shy from the spotlight? And if only she would work again …” (p. x)

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