Stardogs

I've enjoyed other books by Dave Freer - most especially "Dragon's Ring" and "Dog and Dragon".He's also contributed - enough to be a named author - to various multi-author books that I have enjoyed.I did not, unfortunately, enjoy this one.There are lots of little errors that a line editor would have caught - this is obviously a solo effort on Amazon CreateSpace; I've done that myself with a book of the same length; the author really has to proof-read each sentence separately and not "read the story".The first quarter of the book is a "Novel of ideas" - very difficult to write at all well, it's "Tell, not Show" writing; that bit almost seems to be world-building notes for the rest of the book.After that inauspicious beginning, a consistent set of characters emerges and the rest of the novel follows them.There is a strong echo of Larry Niven's polemics against "Water Kingdoms"; whilst I agree with that, the unrelieved 'anti' aspect becomes wearing.Progress is also very like A. E. van Vogt - a new, hitherto unsuspected, concept is thrown in every thousand words or so, in order to drive the plot a bit further.A very Disneylike aspect is the killing-off of those who betray the others TWICE, just after the second such.It took me four days to struggle through it - this size of book, if gripping, would usually take me just three hours; twice I stopped to re-read a novella by LMB (the two 'Penric' stories) as pure relief.The next of Dave's books that I read was "Changeling's Island" - same length - took me just three hours to read, in one session.It's also recently occurred to me that the life-cycle of the stardogs is uncannily similar to Terry Pratchett's "sundogs" in "Dark Side of the Sun". Subconscious echo, I think.

David Freer is the best!