Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Reviews

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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April 14, 2016

Forest Gods, by Ryan Campbell – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Forest Gods, by Ryan Campbell. Illustrated by Zhivago.
St. Paul, MN, Sofawolf Press, September 2015, trade paperback $19.95 (343 [+ 2] pages), Kindle $7.99.

6147FNg4eeL._SX326_BO1,204,203,200_This is the direct sequel to Campbell’s September 2013 God of Clay, and the middle novel in his The Fire Bearers trilogy.   As with all too many trilogies of this sort, The Fire Bearers is a single novel in three volumes more than a series of three novels.   If you have not started it yet, get and read God of Clay first, then immediately read Forest Gods. Be aware that it ends with a cliffhanger, and that it may be another two years until Book Three is published.

In a fantasy prehistoric Africa, the great Saharan savanna is drying up. Animals and human tribes migrate south and further south again to the forest-jungle as the new desert inexorably spreads after them. But the forest itself will not let them enter. The trees and vines come alive and kill any humans who venture among them. This is apparently because the forest gods – Kwaee, king of the gods who looks like an anthropomorphized leopard; Asubonten, the giant crocodile goddess of the rivers; Atetea, the little ant god; and many others – have turned against them. Most of the forest gods blame the humans for turning to Ogya, the powerful god of fire and destruction, and becoming his worshippers. But Kwaee, sulking on his forest throne, isn’t doing anything about it. Kwaee doesn’t even believe in the Fire Bringers (humans).

Doto, Kwaee’s son who also looks like an anthro leopard, worries that his father is abdicating his responsibility by ignoring the desert’s spread. When Doto begs Kwaee to Do Something, Kwaee angrily orders Doto to capture a Fire Bringer if they’re real.

The forest gods’ story is intermixed with that of two young human brothers whose tribe has slowly been pushed from the shrinking savanna to the edges of Africa’s forest-jungle. Clay and Laughing Dog, the second and third sons of their tribal ruler, hold different beliefs: Clay worships the tribe’s traditional animal gods, while Laughing Dog is an atheist. Clay is captured by Doto and dragged into the forest-jungle to be presented to Kwaee, who will almost certainly kill him.

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April 13, 2016

Over Time, by Kyell Gold – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Over Time, by Kyell Gold. Illustrated by Rukis and Kenket.
St. Paul, MN, Sofawolf Press, January 2016, hardcover $39.95 (432 pages), trade paperback $19.95 ([5] + 376 [+ 2] pages), Kindle $9.99.

overtimeOver Time is a romance novel intended for an adult audience only and contains some explicit sexual scenes of a primarily Male/Male nature. It is not for sale to persons under the age of 18. (publisher’s advisory)

Over Time is the final volume in this series; Out of Position Book 5. It’s hard to write a meaningful review of this Book 5 alone without covering all the background. If you’re familiar with the first four novels – Out of Position (January 2009), Isolation Play (January 2011), Divisions (January 2013), and Uncovered (July 2014) – you’ve probably already gotten this Book 5. If you’re not, you’ll do better to read all five in the proper order. They’re all five worth it.

They’re also all very homoerotic, with explicit gay m/m sex scenes. They are about two young men (who happen to be a tiger and a red fox) falling in love and going through considerable lovemaking with all the erect penises and the sticky bodily fluids, as they go through life. Kyell Gold is a prize-winning, top-quality author, and these five novels are so well-written that you will be caught up in the lives of Devlin Miski (the tiger) and Wiley “Lee” Farrel (the fox), even if you don’t care for the gay sex scenes. Or even if you don’t care for football – there are also many scenes of explicit extended football action.

The five novels are narrated in the first person by Dev and Lee, in mostly alternating chapters. In the first book, Out of Position, Dev and Lee are adolescent seniors at Forester University. Dev is a cornerback on the university’s football team, and Lee is a gay activist. Dev has a one-night stand with what seems to be a sexy vixen who turns out to be Lee in drag. Dev realizes that his sexual orientation is gay and that he is in love with the male Lee, while Lee realizes that his practical joke on a football jock has led him to a real romance. After carrying on their romance in secrecy, the novel ends with Dev publicly “coming out of the closet”; the first football player to do so. (Out of Position was published several years before the first admittedly gay football player in real life.)

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April 6, 2016

Cat Crimebusters and Other P.I.’s on Paws, Part 5 – Book Reviews by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Cat Crimebusters, Part 1

Cat Crimebusters, Part 2

Cat Crimebusters, Part 3

Cat Crimebusters, Part 4

As far as I am concerned, all of the other “cat cozy” series with cat detectives are phonies. The only two that “sort of” qualify are (1) the Magical Cats Mysteries by Sofie Kelly.

51lAhNCv3iL._SX308_BO1,204,203,200_51PrlAw68UL._SX307_BO1,204,203,200_51XL0-l2BkL._SX308_BO1,204,203,200_Curiosity Thrilled the Cat. February 2011.

Sleight of Paw. September 2011.

Copycat Killing. May 2012.

Cat Trick. February 2013.

Final Catcall. October 2013.

A Midwinter’s Tail. October 2014.

Faux Paw. October 2015.

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April 4, 2016

Soldiers of Ice, by David Cook – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

BKTG00231Soldiers of Ice, by David Cook. Map. (Forgotten Realms – The Harpers, Nº 7)
Lake Geneva, WI, TSR, Inc., December 1993, paperback $4.95 ([2 +] 312 pages), Kindle $7.99.

There are anthropomorphic novels hidden among the authorized books of popular fantasy-role-playing games. Case in point: TSR’s 1987 Forgotten Realms spinoff of Dungeons & Dragons.

According to Wikipedia: “Forgotten Realms is the name of an imaginary fantasy world that exists somewhere beyond the real world. The setting is described as a world of strange lands, dangerous creatures, and mighty deities, where magic and seemingly supernatural phenomena are quite real. The premise is that, long ago, the Earth and the world of the Forgotten Realms were more closely connected. As time passed, the inhabitants of planet Earth have mostly forgotten about the existence of that other world—hence the term Forgotten Realms.”

The Forgotten Realms merchandising includes well over two hundred novels and short fiction anthologies from 1987 to September 2012, in hardback and paperback editions, from TSR, Inc. (Tactical Studies Rules) and its successor, Wizards of the Coast (including one by furry author Paul Kidd, The Council of Blades). Soldiers of Ice by David Cook, the seventh in the subseries about The Harpers, features the fierce doglike gnolls of the valley of Samek.

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April 1, 2016

La Saga d’Atlas & Axis, T. 3, by Pau – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

51u-in0SJhL._SX344_BO1,204,203,200_La Saga d’Atlas & Axis, t.3, by Pau.
Roubaix, France, Ankama Éditions, November 2015, hardcover €12.90 (60 + [3] pages).

Once again, Lex Nakashima & I present our conspiracy to get you to read French animalière bandes dessinées that aren’t likely to be published in English.

Has it really been 2 ½ years since I reviewed tomes 1 & 2 for Flayrah? Well, Jean-Marc Pau has been busy. Not only has he written & drawn this volume, he has made a “movie” of the whole series. If you look closely, you can find a little animation in it. The 3:25-minute “movie” starts with images from the first two albums; tome 3 starts at 2:09 minutes.

I described La Saga d’Atlas & Axis as “Their world looks like a doggy version of Astérix & Obélix …” Cutely drawn but without the humor. The setting, allowing for the anthropomorphic animals, is around the 9th & 10 centuries when the Vikings were taking over Armorica so thoroughly that it’s been called Normandy ever since. This series also differs from Astérix & Obélix in being one continuous adventure rather than standalone albums.

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March 29, 2016

Claw the Way to Victory, Edited by AnthroAquatic – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Pup Matthias

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

51no7yO--nL._SX306_BO1,204,203,200_

Cover by Jenn ‘Pac’ Rodriguez

Claw the Way to Victory, edited by AnthroAquatic
Capalaba, Queensland, Australia, Jaffa Books, January 2016, trade paperback $17.50 (285 pages), Kindle $5.00.

Claw the Way to Victory is an original-fiction anthology of eleven short stories by nine authors, “each showcasing a different sport and [showing] just how the instincts of an animal matched with the intelligence of a human can help or hurt a player. Scratching? Biting? Against the rules? Not this time.” (blurb) It is published by Jaffa Books in Australia, but printed and also sold by editor AnthroAquatic in the U.S., and was released by him at Anthro New England 2016 in Cambridge, MA on January 21-24; hence the price in U.S. dollars and the Amazon Kindle edition.

In “Descent” by TrianglePascal (gliding), Anthony, a mallard TV reporter, interviews Lacy Gallant, a golden eagle who is about to attempt the first unassisted thousand-foot descent off a cliff into a sheer gorge in history – without a parachute.

“With the camera off, Anthony let himself slouch back into his camp chair, then eyed Lacy again. The eagle was watching the bear and the squirrel [Anthony’s camera crew] with curiosity while she sipped her coffee. She looked impossibly relaxed considering what she was going to be attempting that day. She was dressed in a tank top and a tight pair of shorts, both of them specifically designed to reveal as much of her plumage as possible. It showed off the impressive musculature that stretched from her shoulders down to her powerful arms. Despite how dirty and ragtag the rest of her looked, the flight feathers hanging down from those arms were more immaculately cared for than the claws of most supermodels. There was a healthy sheen about them that bespoke hours of daily care.” (p. 11)

The mammals in the sports camera crew think she’s crazy. Anthony, as a bird but not a hunter-diver, can dimly appreciate what she feels when she’s gliding.

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