Dogs of War
The Dogs of War series, Book 1
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Head of Zeus
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Rex runs. Rex hunts. Rex kills. Rex is a Good Dog. A canine Bioform, he is the leader of a mixed group of elite Bioform soldiers in the employ of the mercenary group Redmark, currently deployed in war-ravaged Mexico. With the bear-formed Honey, the lizard Dragon, and the many-bodied Bees, all linked through headware, he does everything his Master, a man named Murray, tells him to do. Honey sometimes voices doubts about their missions, but a Good Dog does not doubt, let alone disobey, his Master.
Then something goes terribly wrong, and he and his unit are alone in the countryside... where it becomes apparent that Murray may not be a Good Man.
What happens next, the choices Rex makes now and in the future, may determine the fates of not only his pack, but the rest of the world's many Bioforms, military or otherwise. But how is Rex supposed to know what the right thing to do is anymore, if he doesn't have a Master to tell him if he's being a Good Dog?
REVIEW: Dogs of War is a dark tale of a future where humans, having failed to properly control artificial intelligence in war robots, "uplift" animals in the form of altered Bioforms to do all the dangerous, inhumane tasks the robots used to do, particularly on the battlefield - providing one more layer of plausible deniability between commanders and war crimes. Rather than create a better world for all beings or even all people, everything just gets worse for everyone (except those at the top of the pyramid, as usual). Rotating points of view give the perspectives of humans and Rex, a dog who is trying very hard to be Good and struggles with the idea that a Master might be Bad. His growth is uneven and filled with setbacks, goaded on one end by the bear Honey, who understands far more than she lets on to anyone and tries to help him see the truth, and Murray, the Master he is intrinsically programmed to trust and obey. Meanwhile, the human world is its usual fickle, often short-sighted self, all too willing to see the worst in everything, even their own creations, and resent being forced to see just what they have done. Through this maze of ever-shifting public and political opinion, Rex must wend his way if he's to help secure a future for his kind.
While the ideas were interesting, and the plot not too predictable, sometimes Dogs of War felt a little long, like it was padded out to book length from a stronger, shorter work. There was also a plot twist that could've been set up a little more. On the whole, though, it's a decent, if sometimes bleak, story of war and how hope is too often throttled by baser elements of human nature.
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