Strange Dogs (The Expanse #6.5)

First up, don’t expect the whole 80-pages stated in the Kindle book details. The story runs to about 60% then it’s an advert chapter for Ann Leckie.

Second up, while it is set on Laconia, don’t expect to meet any of the known Expense characters, apart from a cameo by ex-MCRN Admiral Winston Duarte.

Third up, this has a different tone to the mainline novels. In particular, it is through the eyes of Cara, a young girl who only knows life on Laconia.

Being a short, it’s hard to really critique without giving it away, but let’s just say Cara stumbles on to some amazing/horrifying aspects of the local wildlife and uses it to right a wrong. Of course, being young, Cara is not to know that such things hardly ever go to plan, and tears typically result.

I liked that Cara is well portrayed, though she is perhaps wiser and more mature than you’d expect. That’s needed to drive the story and is not a major issue. The rents are barely there, as would be expected in the circumstances, until they are totally there and suddenly wondering what they did wrong. And the implied tension between the civilian population and Duarte’s soldiers is neatly done.

This short fills in a few fine lines that are revealed in the immediately last Expanse novel (think it’s Book 7 from memory), but you can read it out-of-order, it is neither a reveal or compelling knowledge for the mainline sequence.

And that’s probably the take away. It is interesting, but it’s not really an “Expanse” story in that sense. Indeed, apart from Duarte and your knowledge of the protomolecule from the mainline, it can easily be read totally standalone as a kind of “new to this alien planet” horror story.

So a fine tale, the basics of which a master American horror author writ large decades ago, but not compelling or necessary.

Ten year old Cara was born on earth but is growing up a latchkey kid on one of those newly discovered fringe worlds of the Expanse multiverse. Her idyllic home is occupied by the military and things become more complex. A loner by nature shes found her quiet spot,a meadow by a babbling brook with a pond and everything. That everything includes the chance to see new things for the first time. One of those new things seems to offer miracles on request. Cara is just a little girl and hasnt learned to be cautious when accepting gifts from a stranger. Maybe this time it will be OK.
An engaging protagonist,believable world building and Coreys quality writing make this a keeper.
Mild caveat-I have noticed a increasing trend lately of publishers labeling/marketing short stories as novellas, this novella runs about 55 pages by my estimation.

I’ve read it and said it in past reviews of The Expanse book, but Strange Dogs reminded me how the authors pull the reader into a story with believable details and descriptions of characters thoughts and circumstances.

(eg: When Cara refers to an book illustration of an old French woman feeding pigeons, one of the details is the “beautiful, twisting Daniau tower” in the background. A web search shows a French scientist named A.- L. Daniau is a major contributor to a study on the “Predictability of biomass burning in response to climate changes”. What a great little Easter egg – a climate scientist commemorated in an era where people have seen the ultimate outcome of global warming.)

ABSTRACT (edited for brevity)
Climate is an important control on biomass burning but… Analyses of paleo-fire data show … that temperature is quantitatively the most important driver of changes in biomass burning over the past 21,000 yrs… our results signal a serious cause for concern in the face of continuing global warming.

This novella gives more back-story to the formation of the colony on Laconia, and the development of the Navy that ultimately attacks the Solar System. Much of the story is told from the viewpoint of a young girl who struggles to find her place in her family and the new Laconian society.

I’m glad I read this little novella, but it is quite short. I reached the end and started scanning around for the next chapter, as I figured there had to more than just this little bit. But, that indeed is all there is. I find this somewhat surprising, given the ‘thickness’ and scope of the novels, and I almost feel a little taken advantage of, and ripped-off. The 8th novel won’t be available until some time near mid-2019. In the meantime, I can pay what amounts to about the Kindle price of one of the novels to get a number of little snippets that, by all rights, probably should have been in one of the novels anyway.

A good read, I enjoyed it as much as every other Novella by the tag-team JSA Corey (with the exception of Drive, which never interested me much). As other comments have stated, it’s Pet Semetary in space, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and the POV in this book being dramatically different from Pet Semetary keeps the idea fresh. The child’s POV is also a good way to show us what’s going on on the other side of the Laconia Gate while still keeping things overall a mystery.

We can see the story of Laconia emerging, we can see the next generation of the human race already adapting to their surroundings and to new mentalities better than the colonists who left Sol. It’s only a matter of time before the Gate-world kids are going to be exactly as different from the Earth and Mars societies as the Belters were. In the meantime, Strange Dogs gives us a good look at the evolving human race.

One thing that did disappoint me – also as others have mentioned – was its length. I was left wanting at the end for more story, and finding out that the last 20 pages were inserts from other, unrelated, books left me disappointed and a little upset. It feels short and comes to an inconclusive cliffhanger ending. I’m sure we’ll get a return to Cara and Xan and their parents sometime in Persepolis Rising or one of the books beyond, but the assurance that it *will* get follow-up does nothing to assuage the feeling of dissatisfaction left me by the ending of Strange Dogs.

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