I really wanted to like this book – I thought it would be like The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (which I loved!) with a fun twist of being narrated by a dog. Well, in a sense it was, like Addie LaRue, the dog narrator (named Tomorrow) was immortal – not from making a pact with a supernatural being, but because his owner was an alchemist who had discovered the elixir of life and used it on himself and the dog. Tomorrow had become separated from his owner, and the first half of the book was a looooooooong and tedious repetition of dog waiting for a long time, dog ‘snouting’ (the word over used to mean sniffing, I guess) and thinking he caught a whiff of nice master smell, following the smell for a looooooong time, only to discover it wasn’t his master after all. Again. At least it is believable that a dog would obsess over finding his lost master – dogs do that, but sadly that is where Tomorrow’s believability as a dog ends. Other works of fiction have managed to anthropomorphosise animals much better – so they are fully sentient and able to communicate and yet keep the essence of their animal nature. For example the cat in Adam Robert’s fabulous book Bete, which is deliciously cat like in it’s dark uncaring sarcastic cynicism, and the dog in the Disney Pixar movie, Up which speaks but is so dog like. Tomorrow is far too un dog like. He talks like a well educated gentleman person, and has no dog attributes whatsoever (except for really wanting to find his master). Also, I found the narrator really dull – very monotonous tone and flat delivery – he would do well on those podcasts that are designed to send insomniacs off to sleep.
The book takes place over a couple of hundred years (it felt like it) from about 1600 to the mid eighteen hundreds in Europe, so of you are a history buff, you might enjoy all he battles and political stuff (I’m not, and didn’t).
Obviously some people liked it, because it got a lot of good reviews on Amazon. There you go. It takes all sorts.
Sarah Wray Writer 