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Apr. 8th, 2011 01:49 pmTrigger Warning: Post contains descriptions of animal abuse.
From the book: Summary: Sirius the dog star, is reborn on earth as a puppy with a mission to search for the lost Zoi, the murder weapon of the stars.
This book is a lot of things. It's magic sci-fi. It's a murder mystery. It's about a fish out of water. It's about a little girl and her dog.
It's also got one of the grimmest as hell beginnings I've ever seen in a book and the source of the trigger warning at the top of this post. See, when Sirius is reborn as a puppy, he's part of an unwanted litter and the owner has a sack with a brick. And you get to see it all from Sirius' point of view.
Fortunately, he survives and things go from there.
He has to relearn who he is, how to play fetch, and possibly save Kathleen, his owner, from her abusive foster mother*. Plus there's the murder weapon he has to locate.
I really liked it! It was published in 1975, which explains some of the stuff that had me confused ('why aren't any of these dogs fixed?'), but like other books of hers I've read, it's hard to tell what time period the book was written in. EDIT: Oh wait, except for the fact it also happened during The Troubles in Ireland. Oh my god, how did I forget that.
I'm surprised, I've owned this book since I was at least twelve, but I don't remember ever reading it before. Which is... odd. In any case, read it now and it's excellent. I actually read it all in one sitting. I sat down in Starbucks intending to read a few chapters over coffee, and the next thing I knew my arm was going 'OH GOD WHY DON'T YOU MOVE ME' and I was ten pages from the end.
I'll probably read Hexwood as the next Diana Wynne Jones book I get around to.
*Oh yeah, warning for that too in the book, as well as more abuse involving a cat.
From the book: Summary: Sirius the dog star, is reborn on earth as a puppy with a mission to search for the lost Zoi, the murder weapon of the stars.
THE DOG STAR stood beneath the Judgment Seats and raged. The green light of his fury fired the assembled faces viridian. It lit the underside of the rooftrees and turned their moist blue fruit to emerald.
"None of this is true!" he shouted. "Why can't you believe me, instead of listening to him?" He blazed on the chief witness, a blue luminary from the Castor complex, firing him turquoise. The witness backed hastily out of range.
"Sirius," the First Judge rumbled quietly, "we've already found you guilty. Unless you've anything reasonable to say, be quiet and let the Court pass sentence."
-The opening of Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones
This book is a lot of things. It's magic sci-fi. It's a murder mystery. It's about a fish out of water. It's about a little girl and her dog.
It's also got one of the grimmest as hell beginnings I've ever seen in a book and the source of the trigger warning at the top of this post. See, when Sirius is reborn as a puppy, he's part of an unwanted litter and the owner has a sack with a brick. And you get to see it all from Sirius' point of view.
Fortunately, he survives and things go from there.
He has to relearn who he is, how to play fetch, and possibly save Kathleen, his owner, from her abusive foster mother*. Plus there's the murder weapon he has to locate.
I really liked it! It was published in 1975, which explains some of the stuff that had me confused ('why aren't any of these dogs fixed?'), but like other books of hers I've read, it's hard to tell what time period the book was written in. EDIT: Oh wait, except for the fact it also happened during The Troubles in Ireland. Oh my god, how did I forget that.
I'm surprised, I've owned this book since I was at least twelve, but I don't remember ever reading it before. Which is... odd. In any case, read it now and it's excellent. I actually read it all in one sitting. I sat down in Starbucks intending to read a few chapters over coffee, and the next thing I knew my arm was going 'OH GOD WHY DON'T YOU MOVE ME' and I was ten pages from the end.
I'll probably read Hexwood as the next Diana Wynne Jones book I get around to.
*Oh yeah, warning for that too in the book, as well as more abuse involving a cat.