Helpful Score: 3
A disappointment. Barkis had a good idea but it's not nearly as interesting as it should be. Three stars.
Helpful Score: 2
Here is a first novel like no other: a spellbinding tale that both creates its own fully realized world perspective and provides an incisive look at the ways that humans and animals resemble each other.
A group of elegand monster dogs in top hats, tails, and bustle skirts become instant celebrities when they come to New York in 2008. Refugees from a town whose residents had been utterly isolated for a hundred years, the dogs retain the nineteenth-century Germanic culture of the humans who created them. They are wealthy and glamorous and seem to lead charmed lives - but they find adjusting to the modern world difficult, and when a young woman, Cleo Pira, befriends them, she discovers that a strange, incurable illness threatens them all with extinction.
When the dogs construct their dream home, a fantastic castle on the Lower East Side, and barricade themselves inside, Cleo finds herself one of the few human witnesses to a mad, lavish party that may prove to be the final act in the drama of the lives of the monster dogs.
A group of elegand monster dogs in top hats, tails, and bustle skirts become instant celebrities when they come to New York in 2008. Refugees from a town whose residents had been utterly isolated for a hundred years, the dogs retain the nineteenth-century Germanic culture of the humans who created them. They are wealthy and glamorous and seem to lead charmed lives - but they find adjusting to the modern world difficult, and when a young woman, Cleo Pira, befriends them, she discovers that a strange, incurable illness threatens them all with extinction.
When the dogs construct their dream home, a fantastic castle on the Lower East Side, and barricade themselves inside, Cleo finds herself one of the few human witnesses to a mad, lavish party that may prove to be the final act in the drama of the lives of the monster dogs.
Helpful Score: 1
I'm going to try and start reading this book again. I found it difficult to identify with the characters and not a whole lot of suspense from the beginning to prompt me to read to the end.
Helpful Score: 1
Finally, a rating system that lets me rate this book as low as I want to: 1/2 star. This is the worst book that I have read in years.
Helpful Score: 1
Bakis creates an interesting Frankenstein-ian situation, where sentient bipedal dogs rebel against their creator and attempt to join modern American society. Lovely and bittersweet.
Helpful Score: 1
Mournful horror-adventure story of human-dog hybrids created by a sadistic mad scientist. Terrible in its vividness. Particularly for an animal lover, the overwhelming take-away is a deep sense of sadness and violation for the suffering of the title characters, who are unable to find community among any other creatures except for their own few comrades.
Interesting...not exactly what I thought it would be. By the time the book starts, all the interesting things have already happened. I would have preferred to see more of of Rankstadt and their exodus from there and have less of the main character.
Crazy, weird, cultish--try it for something a bit different.
ISBN number listed as 0-374-18987-0, but that's the hardback version, this is the trade sized paperback version, published 1997.
