Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hunderdemmerung, 27 May 1999
By A Customer
I came away from Lives of the Monster Dogs most wistful. Sometime in the near future, according to author Kristen Bakis, the great Monster Dogs would leave thier north Canada village, and bring thier Victorian elegance, thier Frankenstein bodies, thier doomed lives to Gotham*s refuge of New York City. The story line is alternated largely between the sad German Sheppard Ludwig, and a young (human) woman who becomes thier intermediary for most of the outside world. Much is made (too much?)of the life of thier mad creator and *father* August Rank, he learns, he experiments, he kills his half-brother. (Though it is never stated so in the book, I wonder if the young woman is descended from the brother*s posthumous child.) We are given the remote town Rank and his Dogs flee to, the opera written of its rebellion and destruction; in New York the Monster Dogs hold a parade in the snow, build a fairybook castle. And all the while the Dogs are slowly going mad and dying (with the odd exception of a female Samoyed). There exists no fully driving storyline, much of the book exists in retrospective, in describing its portrait of an ultimately doomed society; the beauty is that this techinique is so effective. Ludwig tries, in increasing desparation, to convey his loneliness, his fears to his human friend. I come away wishing the Monster Dogs were real, that such wonders could really invade our simian world. At best, there is only a dark, beautiful glimpse.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An unsual, intriguing and easy read, but ultimately flat and unrewarding, 11 Jun 2006
The Lives of the Monster dogs should have been an exceptional novel. It has an intriguing premise and all the elements required for a gripping plot - dastardly scientists, loyal and dependable dogs and of course a crusading, innocent journalist to come to the rescue.
It is a retrospective account of the dying days of a race of dogs, the result of over 100 years of experimentation, genetic manipulation and physical alteration. Fitted with artificial hands and mechanic voice boxes, these dogs were designed to the perfect foot soldiers - tough, intelligence, loyal and deadly - but by the time their race has been perfected the ghoulish man who first conceived of them is long dead and with him has gone any sense of their purpose or any concept of whom they were intended to fight. Frustrated, the monster dogs rise up against the community in which they were bred, massacring their human masters and, after years of wondering around the North American continent, descend on an unsuspecting New York with all the grace and elegance of 19th century Prussian High Society - and fabulous wealth to boot.
Having already been asked to accept that a village in Canada could exist for over a hundred years unnoticed by anyone else and that a troupe of 150 or so man-sized speaking dogs dressed in Victorian costume could, in the early 21st century, roam through Canada and New England for eight years without comment, the reader is now asked to believe that the monster dogs would be accepted by New Yorkers with little more interest or comment than that which would be generated by the arrival of a Hollywood B-star. This is, quite frankly, too much. The author's argument that "hey, all New Yorkers are immigrants anyway and therefore understand and accept diversity" just isn't convincing. And this is the real flaw in the novel: while its language and scenario are rooted in the realism of today, its central premise is incredible and the reader is given no assistance to suspend disbelief.
This doesn't undermine the work entirely. It has a lot of good points. It is a fun and easy read, always thought-provoking and at times grotesques or moving. The drawing of the characters of the dogs is masterly, in particular those of Lydia, a tender and intelligent friend of peace, and Ludwig who alone seems to struggle to accept his differences. Yet ultimately, The Lives of the Monster Dogs fails to delivery on the promise of its premise, in part because of its incredible nature and in part because it, tantalising, fails to exploit fully the psychological issues it raises. One is felt feeling that the author has squandered an opportunity to write something of real merit and lasting significance.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting idea with no support., 26 Aug 1998
By A Customer
This book's premise drew me in. What a wonderful idea! I was expecting to learn about these creatures and what they thought and how they felt in their final hours. The relationships with humans also held promise. What was actually delivered was a watery stroy, false relationships and a lot of blathering on about the narrators hard life with no a/c. I give the author all due credit for coming up with an original idea and some interesting and engaging characters, such as Lydia, but I have to say that the story did not due the idea justice and in the end, I felt no closer to caring about the dogs or the peolple than I did in the first paragraph. Too many unanswered questions and assumptions into the relationships.
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