Saturday, June 3, 2017

An Oath of Dogs | Wendy N. Wagner

*Book received from NetGalley for an Honest Review

Summary:

Standish has been hired to help out the Communications at Canaan Lake on the moon (not planet, moon) Huginn. When she wakes up from the cryo sleep she was in to make the trip from Earth, she is told that Duncan, the man who hired her, has died. Went missing the forests of Huginn and hasn't been found since. So, she's now head of Communications. When she gets to Canaan Lake with her service dog, Hattie, she finds out the hard way that there are wild dogs in Canaan Lake that dig up corpses and kill those that try to stop them. When she starts asking questions about Duncan's disappearance, however, she finds there's another layer to this small town that she may not like.

Review:

I'm not generally one for mystery novels. All the ones I read just don't surprise me anymore. They're kinda predictable. The overall mystery of this book wasn't too mysterious after a bit, I'll admit. That being said, I didn't put the book down. I happily kept reading more because I found the characters and, more importantly, the world of Huginn to be incredibly interesting. I really think there's a lot more that Wagner can do with this world and I'll be happy to see it.

I greatly enjoyed reading and trying to picture the various flora of Huginn. Seriously, if you are at all interested in botany or ecology, this is a great Sci-Fi book for you. One of the main characters is a botanist who knows what he's talking about. But there are so many parts of the descriptions of the forests and the insects that made me really wish this book had come with illustrations. The naturally multi-colored wood of the coveted, but literally explosive, horsetail trees are something that I really want to see! And Bajowski's (the botanist) observations about the terran insects' adaptations to and with Huginn's insects were fascinating to me.

And I haven't even talked about the religious sect The Believers yet! Think Amish, but way in the future. They were the first colonists in Canaan Lake and we get to find out that their journey was far from easy when Songhauser, the company that practically rules all of space travel, misplaced their main food supply boxes. Yeah, Huginn is not friendly to outsiders and no one knows that better than the Believers. 

Overall, this was an entertaining book. The mysterious parts weren't too difficult to figure out after a while, but it was still a good read. There is certainly plenty room for more stories from Huginn and I do look forward to them! 3.5 hoots!

              Hoot!Hoot!

               Hoot!Hoo




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