Mort

Some interesting ideas and a fun read, but it sometimes felt rushed, as if the author had lots of ideas to put down but didn't take the time to tie these thoughts into a cohesive and structured story.
If you enjoy B movies you'll likely enjoy this; but as the range of ratings shows, this isn't a book for everyone.

I really liked this book. I was engaged the whole way through. While I agree with some of the other reviewers that some of the characters, Mort(e) especially, lacked development, I also found that he was easiest for me to identify with. Even if it didn't seem like there was enough there to justify Mort(e) searching for Sheba so single-mindedly, it still made sense to me; I can imagine that being thrust suddenly into sentience and understanding of one's slavery, I'd want to search for that one comforting piece of home. Not to mention that while I understand the bloodthirsty uprising of the animals, having been made to realize their plight, I'm not a fighter. Mort(e), despite his skill at it, just wants a normal life, whatever that is in this new world of upright, sentient animals.

This book brought up something I love to think about even if it wasn't really explored here - how justified would the bloodbath be if animals gained sentience suddenly? The characters in this book referred to their previous slavery multiple times, but I'm sure many of us don't believe we are keeping our pets enslaved. There's at least one reviewer on this site even who said they reassured their pets that they're loved members of the family! But look at the way we treat wild animals and especially livestock: no one can argue there's not cruelty there. Even with the pets we treat with love and provide every comfort to, if you replaced them with humans, slavery is the exact word. But many would argue that since our pets are not sentient, we are justified in keeping them neutered and de-clawed. It's for their own good, I guess. Pets evolved side-by-side with us so really, they're exactly suited to the lives they live in our homes. I'm not trying to argue for or against that; it's actually more interesting to assume that we are morally justified in the way we treat our pets (barring abuse, of course). So then say they gain sentience for some reason or another. We are now morally obligated to treat them like people, let them make their own decisions, not keep them in our houses against their wills, etc. I could understand their pain and anger at realizing they've been kept prisoner, been physically mutilated to serve our purpose and not theirs. Can we be blamed for doing something that was reasonable at the time? Are we responsible for the pain and suffering caused for a creature who now understands what it means to be a parent and to want children, but is unable to? Can we mitigate the anger by immediately apologizing and creating social structures to support their new-found sentience and prevent further abuse? Would they understand the way we treated them before sentience and forgive us? I actually think this is more compelling when thinking about AI, because there are very good arguments that the way we treat animals, even pets, is unjustified. It would be much easier for us to create AI that mimics the state of being alive while knowing that it is not “truly” alive. But say your AI gains enough complexity for emergent sentience? At what point do you even realize that your AI is truly sentient instead of just mimicking? What does that even mean? Is Data a person??

ANYWAY. They don't even talk about this stuff in the book. So 3 stars for the book by itself, and an extra star for all that stuff it made me think about.

So I had the temerity to chide my niece on her kitty fantasy series Warriors only to find myself picking this sci-fi book focused on an ant uprising bent on destroying the humans and an evolved house cat in the animal army looking for her lost love, the neighbour's dog. Seriously.

So naturally when you write adult fiction about gun-toting animals I assume there's some deep moral centre to the whole endeavour. There's an easy joke about a pig naming himself Bonaparte (since Napoleon was taken multiple times already) There's also a surreal moment when a real-estate cat coughs up a hairball into her clipboard and tries to hide it.

So I'm not sure if I'm reading an anthromorphized moral story about the power of love, notions of faith and the idea that some are more equal than others or a post-apocalyptic, furry fantasy.