Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Tag: fantasy

February 5, 2016

Scarlett: Star on the Run – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

scarlett_COVERfinalwebScarlett: Star on the Run, by Susan Schade and Jon Buller. Illustrated by Jon Buller.
NYC, Papercutz, November 2015, trade paperback $14.99 (173 pages), Kindle $8.81.

Here is another all-ages novel by Susan Schade & Jon Buller (wife & husband) in their signature format of alternating chapters in comic-book format and in traditional-novel text. (I reviewed their three-novel The Fog Mound in 2007.) It is mostly for 8- to 12-year-old children, but it has aspects that adult furry fans will enjoy. This would be a simplistic talking-animal comic book/novel for young children, if it weren’t for the revelation that the talking animals have been scientifically made intelligent and given speech.

Is Shane Pafco, the dictatorial owner of Pafco Studios, a movie producer/director or a Mad Scientist? What year is Scarlett set in, with futuristic cars and flying spycams? When Scarlett, the cat movie star of Pafco Studios, gets the chance to escape, she is quick to take it even into a snowy, freezing outdoors. She is lucky enough to be taken in by grouchy old Frank Mole, a half-crazy, gun-waving hermit who doesn’t trust any people and hears voices. He believes that a talking cat is only part of his delusion; and when Scarlett finds out that Trotter, Pafco’s experimental talking dog, has followed her, she fast-talks Frank into believing that he needs a dog, too. Scarlett wants to be a natural cat and catch mice, until Frank’s messy, vermin-filled cabin gives her the opportunity to do so.

“I don’t know,” she muses. “Something about all that SKIN and HAIR is making me lose my appetite.” (p. 29)

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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 EndAmphibians’ 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?

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February 2, 2016

My Little Pony: The Art of Equestria – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

MLP CoverMy Little Pony: The Art of Equestria, by Mary Jane Begin. Foreword by Jayson Thiessen. Illustrated.
NYC, Abrams, October 2015, hardcover $29.95 (215 [+ 1] pages), Kindle $13.49.

Furry fandom has had a sometimes adversarial relationship with the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic TV series and its fandom, or at least its Brony often-extremist fans. The TV animated cartoon series that premiered on October 10, 2010 is in its fifth season/year now. It has won the Ursa Major Award as the Best Anthropomorphic Dramatic Short or Series for 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013, resulting in screams of both (from within furry fandom), “Oh, no! How could it have lost!?” (in 2014, to Furry Force), and (from Brony fandom), “How dare you furry fans try to hijack our program!? MLP:FIM is totally unanthropomorphic! The ponies of Equestria can just talk and sometimes fly, that’s all!”

My Little Pony: The Art of Equestria is an Everything You Want To Know About MLP:FIM, lavish, heavily-illustrated, full-color coffee-table art book. It has already been reviewed and analyzed in detail by the MLP:FIM fans, to general praise. Here is a review for furry fandom.

The book is a how-to and how-it-was-done about the TV animation series and the development of its world of Equestria, rather than an exploration in detail of Equestria and the “Mane Six” ponies, although the reader does get that, too. It begins with a double-page map, described below. A Foreword by the Supervising Director at DHX Media, the animation studio in Vancouver, outlines on one page the basic framework of the series.

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February 1, 2016

Off Leash – Book Review by Fred Patten

by Pup Matthias

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

OFF-LEASH_cover-800wOff Leash, by Daniel Potter. Illustrated by Sabertooth Ermine.
El Cerrito, CA, Fallen Kitten Productions, October 2015, trade paperback $12.99 (vi + i +288 pages), Kindle $3.99.

“It had started as a good day. Objectively that was a lie, but after six months of unemployment self-delusion becomes a survival trait. I was two days from getting booted off unemployment, with my girlfriend AWOL for the last week. By ‘good day’ I mean I had wrestled a small drop of hope out of my heart that one of the half dozen jobs I had applied to while guzzling down iced coffees might result in an interview.” (p. 1)

Thomas Khatt, unemployed librarian, has been practically living in his local coffee shop for the last six months as he applies for job after job. Over the weeks he has noticed his reclusive neighbor as another regular customer; an old man, presumably retired, reading books with a pet cat. One day Thomas and the old man happen to leave the shop at the same time. The old man is immediately struck by a hit-&-run car. As he dies, Thomas blacks out and awakens in his own home as a cougar.

While he is trying to figure out what has happened to him, his door unlocks itself and an elderly hippie witch, Mistress Sabrina, comes in to welcome him to “the Real World”. She demonstrates enough magical power to convince him that objecting would be a bad idea, so he follows her and Rudy, a talking squirrel, to her home where he meets her familiar, a sable named Cornealius. They magically restore his power of speech. While this is going on, Thomas is barraged with a confusing flood of information about how the Real World works:

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January 28, 2016

Swords and Sausages by Jan – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Pup Matthias

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

coverSwords and Sausages, by Jan
Hong Kong, Tiger Knight Comics, September 2015, trade paperback $30.00 (unpaged [128 pages]).

“Once upon a time, nestled somewhere amongst the rolling hills of Vale Valley, was a lively, albeit small, kingdom. And in this kingdom was …”

The main things that there “was” are Tor (a hunky tiger) and Silver (a svelte white vixen), two inept street thieves, would-be con artists, and even more would-be road warriors (robbers), plus the local sheriff (lion). Other supporting characters include the sheriff’s town guard (wolves), and varied town merchants (assorted anthropomorphized mammals, reptiles, and birds). The gryphons are unanthropomorphized and are treated as eagles. Read the rest of this entry »

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January 22, 2016

Foxcraft: Book One, The Taken by Inbali Iserles – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Pup Matthias

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

foxcraft-cover-usFoxcraft: Book One, The Taken, by Inbali Iserles. Illustrated by the author. Map by Jared Blando.
NYC, Scholastic Press, September 2015, hardcover $16.99 ([3] + 252 [+ 8] pages), Kindle $8.87.

Foxcraft: Book One, The Taken, by Inbali Iserles. Illustrated by the author. Map by Jared Blando.
London, Scholastic Press, October 2015, paperback £5.99 ([3] + 252 [+ 8] pages), Audio CD £27.70.

Foxcraft: Die Magie der Füchse, by Inbali Iserles. Illustrated by the author. Map by Jared Blando. Translated by Katharina Orgaß.
Frankfurt, Fischer KJB, September 2015, hardcover €14.99 ([3] + 252 [+ 8] pages), Kindle €12.99.

I won’t guarantee the accuracy of the descriptions of the British and German editions, because I have not seen them. The American cover by Liam Peters is actually a wraparound digital painting, but the back cover portion does not seem to be online anywhere.

Foxcraft is another series for Young Adults; recommended for 8- to 12-year-olds or grades 4 to 7. The blurb calls it “The first book in a thrilling fantasy trilogy”, so we know that it will be only three novels.

“My paws slipped on dry earth. I kicked up shrouds of dust as I hurtled toward the fence. Swerving to avoid it, I righted myself and dived under the splintering dead wood. My pursuer was gaining on me as I grasped for the wildway, the tangle of greenery on the other side. I caught the rich aroma of hazel and cedar, the quiet and peace of the world beyond the web of grass.” (p. 1) Read the rest of this entry »

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January 21, 2016

Fuzzy Business 3: End Game, by Amelia Ritner – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Pup Matthias

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

Fuzzy BusinessFuzzy Business 3: End Game, by Amelia Ritner
Seattle, WA, CreateSpace, November 2015, trade paperback $7.99 (173 pages), Kindle $1.99.

You would think that any book in a series subtitled “End Game” would be the final volume, wouldn’t you? Well, maybe you’d be right and maybe not.

In Fuzzy Business (May 2013) and Fuzzy Business 2: Fuzz Harder (December 2013), the young humanimal cat-girl Miara Cooper (she has cat ears, whiskers, a tail, and light fur) in San Francisco in the last half of the 21st Century finds herself the target of PAGE, a brutal anti-humanimal hate group who intend to make her a fatal example of what they do to anyone not 100% human. She is defended by the mysterious hunky coyote-man biker John, who starts out by kidnaping her, and the equally-handsome human Connor who, when she asks for help, comes running with “[…] An AR-15, a scoped hunting rifle with a wooden stock, a pump action shotgun, two .38 revolvers, a Glock identical to the one that John had pointed earlier, a laser-equipped Glock 26 that John snickered at when he saw, ten varying boxes of ammunition, a stun gun, a .22 semiautomatic rifle with an obscenely huge magazine of bullets attached to it […]” (Fuzzy Business, p. 113) and a lot more. She also has the help, whether she wants it or not, of pro-humanimal activists who insist on recruiting her into their groups. And PETA. Read the rest of this entry »

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January 20, 2016

Unnaturals: The Battle Begins – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

UnnaturalUnnaturals [1]: The Battle Begins, by Devon Hughes. Illustrated by Owen Richardson.
NYC, HarperCollins Publishers/Katherine Tegen Books, October 2015, hardcover $16.99 ([5] + 335 [+ 4] pages), Kindle $9.99.

Unnaturals (the animals in the story are called “the Unnaturals”) is a fantasy-adventure series for 8- to 12-year-old readers; grades 3 to 7. The standard formula is to produce 4 or 5 annual serialized novels, each up to the last ending on a minor conclusion and cliffhanger leading to the next.

The futuristic city of Lion’s Head is populated by both humans and feral domestic animals; in this case, dogs. The story starts with two dogs of one alley pack, Castor and his brother Runt. The pack is led by the brutal Alpha. Castor and Runt have a German shepherd mother and a Mexican wolf father. Since this is a fantasy, the animals can converse intelligently in “animal talk”.

“The brothers ran together, matching step for step, breath for breath. The farther they went into the city, the taller and more packed together the black glass towers grew. The domed walkways that ran between them crisscrossed until they blocked out every last bit of sun. It was never dark, though – every side of every building flashed dozens of lifelike images each minute: political nonsense and Lion’s Head news. Pictures selling things that glittered and things that glowed and things that promised to change your life. Humans like you never saw them in real life – with faces three stories tall instead of tiny dots, sitting outside, grinning up at the sun with exposed pink and brown flesh, looking like they weren’t afraid of all the things crawling up their upturned noses through the air. Read the rest of this entry »

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January 19, 2016

The Long Road Home, by Rukis – Book Review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

The-Long-Road-HomeThe Long Road Home, by Rukis. Illustrated by the author.
Dallas, TX, FurPlanet Productions, July 2015, hardcover $29.95 (403 pages), trade paperback $19.95, electronic edition $12.95.

This is a mature content book.  Please ensure that you are of legal age to purchase this material in your state or region (publisher’s advisory.)

This is the final volume of the trilogy begun in Off the Beaten Path and continued in Lost On Dark Trails. Those were first published as trade paperbacks; now all three are available as $29.95 hardcovers.

The trilogy follows Shivah, the bobcat narrator, a Carvecian native “squaw” in an anthropomorphic world roughly similar to late 18th-century North America (the Amurescan colonies in Carvecia fought a war for their independence and formed the United Carvecian Nations a little over a generation earlier); and her two companions, Ransom, a coyote trapper, and Puck (Puquanah), a blind silver fox shaman. Shivah is on a quest for vengeance against Methoa’nuk (also a bobcat), Shivah’s ex-husband, a cruel native warrior who has joined a band of raiders that have wiped out Shivah’s tribe and now threaten the new UCN peoples along the Eastern Seaboard. Lost On Dark Trails went in a major new direction from Off the Beaten Path, so it should be no surprise that The Long Way Home does the same. Read the rest of this entry »

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January 14, 2016

A Menagerie of Heroes; A Rainfurrest Anthology – book review by Fred Patten.

by Patch O'Furr

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

Dear Patch;

FurPlanet is advertising that its appearance at Further Confusion will be the final opportunity at present to buy the RainFurrest charity anthologies.  FurPlanet is no longer carrying them after last December 31st and it is bringing its final printed copies for sale at FC 2016.  The book is at least temporarily unavailable, because it will be up to the con to take over printing and selling after this year. – Fred

rainfurrest2015A Menagerie of Heroes; A Rainfurrest Anthology, edited by Ryan Hickey and Garrett Biggerstaff.
Dallas, TX, FurPlanet Productions, September 2015, trade paperback $15.00 (320 pages).

Seattle’s annual RainFurrest convention has published a charity anthology every year since 2011, growing from 108 pages in 2011 to 269 pages in 2014. All stories are donated to RainFurrest by mid-June, and the anthology is printed by FurPlanet Productions in Dallas to be sold at the convention in September, with all proceeds donated to that year’s charity. RainFurrest 2015’s total donation was over $10,000 to the Cougar Mountain Zoo in Issaquah, Washington. The anthologies are subsequently sold through the FurPlanet catalogue.

In 2015 for the first time there were two charity anthologies; the “clean” A Menagerie of Heroes with 14 stories totaling 320 pages, and the “adult” Naughty Sexy Furry Writing; Enter at your own Risk with six stories totaling 124 pages. Here is the G- and PG-rated one, featuring RainFurrest 2015’s theme of Swords and Sorcery.

“Fox Confessor Brings the Flood” by Wilfred B. Wolf is a charming story, but you have to get through some clunky writing to read it. In a medieval Japanese fantasy setting, Gasu Yeo is a Bard, a gifted musician and a royal official sent out to spread the news and the latest royal pronouncements to the farthest corners of the Empire. He is also one of the first Kitsu Bards; one of the first of the Empire’s foxlike anthros to be accepted into the Bards. When he is assigned to visit a distant village that has never seen a Kitsu, he is mistaken for a mythical fox trickster bringing bad luck or a curse. Yeo must convince the human peasants that while he may look like a humanoid fox, he is as human and peaceful (and a royal official) as any of them. The story is delightful, even though given a choice of words, Wolf picks a flat one every time. Read the rest of this entry »

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