Mort(e) (Robert Repino)

Mort(e)
The War with No Name series, Book 1
Robert Repino
Soho
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**(Bad)

DESCRIPTION: Sebastian used to want nothing more than his patch of sun on the carpet, a bowl of food, and his neighbor dog-friend Sheba. But he was an ordinary cat in extraordinary times. After millennia of patient plotting, the ant queen Hymenoptera Unus has begun the war to eradicate humanity as an invasive species. First, she bred tank-sized Alpha ants. Then, she initiated the Change, a combination of airborne hormones and ultrasonic signals that transformed many of the birds and the beasts into upright-walking sapient soldiers in her global army... everything from wolves and bobcats to rats and pets.
And thus, one day, Sebastian found himself aiming a shotgun at his former "master."
Shedding his "slave" name and becoming Mort(e), he became a hero in the elite Red Sphinx under the ruthless Changed bobcat Culdesac... but always, in the back of his mind, he remembers that patch of sun and the canine friend he shared it with, a friend he hadn't seen since his former master shot at her moments before his own Change. And nothing - not time, not war, not the dreaded human bioweapon EMSAH, not even the ant queen herself - can stop him from his search.

REVIEW: The cover hype frequently invokes Orwell's classic allegory Animal Farm, the tale of the pig-led revolution in the barnyard that led a barn of deluded animals into a dark future of oppression and betrayal. That is about the closest comparison I can think of, one reinforced by numerous nods in the narrative. (There's even a Changed lieutenant pig who took the name Bonaparte, because Napoleon had been taken "many times over.") Unfortunately, while Orwell kept his allegory focused on his message, Repino tries to build a broader world - one that devolves into a commentary on the merits of Abrahamic religions in a Message at least as heavy-handed (or heavy-pawed, or -hooved) as Orwell's, often moreso. Sebastian-turned-Mort(e) becomes an empty mouthpiece of this message, as do the other characters, intriguing as they may have started.  The internal logic of the piece falls apart under its weight, the suspension of disbelief cracking under animals that seemed far too human and self-aware in some ways and too naive and easily bamboozled in others. For instance, it's painfully obvious what the real source of the bioweapon EMSAH is almost from the moment it appears, but the thought doesn't even occur to otherwise-intelligent beings. By the end, I was almost literally grinding my teeth as the "inspirational" Message grew increasingly incandescent, throwing even more holes and flaws into sharper relief - holes I would've flown over happily had my belief remained suspended, but which crashed and burned long before the finale. What's left without that suspension? A collection of half-developed characters and often-gory images, trampled under their own Message.

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