#FridayReads for May 7, 2021

 

For this week's #FridayReads, I'm plugging one of my favourite SFF-series of books from the last few years, the "War With No Name" books by Robert Repino.

The series includes two novels and a novella, with another novel coming later this year!

I reviewed Mort(e) back in 2016 (read my review), and it's one of those books that just blew my mind as I read it. In the book, a colony of ants (yes, ants) instigates a war with humanity, transforming “surface animals into high-functioning two-legged beings who will rise up and kill their masters.... Former house cat Mort(e) becomes a legend in the war.”

 

To quote my 2016 review:

At its most basic, this is a tale of friendship and love. Mort(e) the (former) cat doesn’t believe in grand plans and prophecies. He fights and makes sacrifices in the struggle against the humans, but he is not loyal to, or motivated by religion or politics or ideology. He does believe in friendship and loyalty and love, because he has experienced those things: not with humans, but with Sheba the dog, before the world changed. Through every hardship and every battle, the memory of that sustains him.

The book is full of great characters, and even the less than savoury ones get fleshed out enough that you feel for them, too: the formidable ant queen, the former fighting dog Wawa (I even felt a fleeting glimmer of pity for Wawa’s awful terrible owner), the wild cat Culdesac, Bonaparte the pig… I felt for all of them. Mort(e) himself is a fantastic anti-hero: stubborn, distrustful of any and all authorities, brave and ornery, never swayed by grand visions and grander words.

The books in the series are:

1. Mort(e) 
2. D’Arc 
3. Culdesac (a novella)
4. ...and the upcoming Malefactor (set for release in August, and available for pre-order now!)
   

This book series reminded me of Orwell's Animal Farm, and I still think about the ideas and the world and the characters in these books on a weekly basis. Reading Mort(e) was part of the inspiration for my story "Mothers, Watch Over Me", which was published in Mythic Delirium and later appeared at Cast of Wonders, wonderfully narrated by Amy H. Sturgis.

🕮

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