1945 Secker & Warburg edition |
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| Title: |
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story |
| Author: |
George Orwell |
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Secker & Warburg (London), Aug 1945 |
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Hardcover, 91 pp, UK £ 0/6/0 |
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[ BN / Al / Pw ] |
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If there is one classic above all others in anthropomorphic literature, it is arguably Animal Farm. This fable of how a group of animals revolt against their human masters, and develop their own (deeply flawed) civilization, has never been out of print since it was published in 1945. It was written by George Orwell (Eric Blair) as a parable of Stalin’s betrayal and corruption of the Soviet revolution (Orwell, a lifelong Socialist, was reportedly annoyed by reviews describing it as an attack on Socialism itself), but for enthusiasts of anthropomorphic fiction it stands as the definitive description of intelligent animals creating a joint society and trying to coexist with humans.
The animals of Manor Farm are oppressed by Mr. Jones, their drunken owner. Old Major, the ancient boar whom they all consider their philosophical mentor, argues that humans are a parasite which they can do without.
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself. […] Is it not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings? Only get rid of Man, and the produce of our labour would be our own. Almost overnight we could become rich and free. What then must we do? Why, work night and day, body and soul, for the overthrow of the human race! That is my message to you, comrades: Rebellion!
Old Major dies, and the animals continue to suffer until the night that Mr. Jones forgets to feed them and then beats them in a drunken frenzy. The animals revolt and chase every human from the farm, then are frightened yet giddy at their own success. They determine to rename Manor Farm as Animal Farm, and to put into practice Old Major’s goal of a society of animal equals, painting on the barn their Seven Commandments including “No animal shall kill any other animal” and “All animals are equal”. A group of clever and enthusiastic pigs led by Napoleon and Snowball gradually emerge as the leaders of Animal Farm. When the neighboring farmers try to restore human mastery, Snowball leads the animals in the successful Battle of the Cowshed. Yet while Snowball is organizing grandiose projects to improve Animal Farm, Napoleon works on his own secret project of raising puppies into attack dogs loyal to him alone. He drives Snowball from the Farm, then presents himself as the saviour of the animal’s revolution from Snowball’s treachery. Gradually the animals’ equality is whittled down, the Seven Commandments are mysteriously changed —“No animal shall kill any other animal without cause”—and the pigs’ leadership is built up.
Napoleon was now never spoken of simply as ‘Napoleon’. He was always referred to in formal style as ‘our Leader, Comrade Napoleon,’ and the pigs liked to invent for him such titles as Father of All Animals, Terror of Mankind, Protector of the Sheep-fold, Ducklings’ Friend, and the like.
Years passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives fled by. A time came when there was no one who remembered the old days before the Rebellion, except Clover, Benjamin, Moses the raven, and a number of the pigs. […] The farm was more prosperous now, and better organized: it had even been enlarged by two fields which had been bought from Mr. Pilkington. […] But the luxuries of which Snowball had once taught the animals to dream, the stalls with electric light and hot and cold water, and the three-day week, were no longer talked about. Napoleon had denounced such ideas as contrary to the spirit of Animism. The truest happiness, he said, lay in working hard and living frugally.
This leads ultimately to the replacement of The Seven Commandments with the one well-known…
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
…and the pigs teaching themselves to walk upon two legs, at which point the other animals can no longer tell them apart from their human oppressors.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of literary analyses of Animal Farm have been written since 1945 to point out the allegorical parallels: Old Major is a combination of Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin; Napoleon is Josef Stalin, who made himself the dictator of the Soviet Union and ruthlessly purged his rivals and enemies; Snowball is Leon Trotsky, whose early goals for the peoples’ revolution were suppressed and who was turned by propaganda into the peoples’ enemy; Squealer, the pig who is Napoleon’s news-announcer, is V. M. Molotov, the early editor of Pravda, the Communist Party’s newspaper, who constantly rewrote history into whatever Stalin wanted it to say; Boxer, the cart horse who believes, “If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right,” is the Soviet masses who blindly trusted Stalin; Mr. Pilkington of Pinchfield Farm and Mr. Frederick of Foxglove Farm, Animal Farm’s off-again, on-again friends and enemies whom Napoleon played off against each other, are Great Britain and Nazi Germany; and so forth and so on. These are all true; yet they are incidental to Animal Farm’s status as a great story of intelligent animals of many species building their own society. Napoleon, Snowball, Squealer, Maximus and the other pigs; Boxer, Clover, and Mollie the horses; Benjamin the donkey; Muriel the goat; the sheep bleating, “Four legs good, two legs bad”—these are among the best-known characters in ‘morph fiction.
The story behind the novella (not a novel; it is only 30,000 words) is also well known. Orwell wrote it during 1944, but had it rejected by Britain’s major publishers because it was such an obvious anti-Stalin polemic and the Soviet Union was still a wartime ally. The minor publisher Secker & Warburg finally accepted it, but because of wartime paper shortages it was not published until August 1945, and then in an edition of only 4,500 copies. It was an instant success, getting rave reviews and selling out within a month. Secker & Warburg rushed another 10,000 copies into print in November, as soon as they could get more paper; it became an American Book of the Month Club selection the next year; and it has gone on to one success after another.
| Ozy and Millie, by D. C. Simpson |
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| Title: |
Prehistrionics: Ozy and Millie, 1997-2000 |
| Publisher: |
www.ozyandmillie.org (Auburn, WA)/Lulu.com (Raleigh, NC), May 2006 |
| ISBN: |
1-84728-773-5 |
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Trade paperback, 176 pages, USD $12.95 |
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Prehistrionics may be purchased from either Amazon.com or Lulu.com
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| Title: |
The Big Book of Ancient, Semi-Coherent Wisdom: Ozy and Millie, 2000-2001 |
| Publisher: |
www.ozyandmillie.org (Auburn, WA)/Lulu.com (Raleigh, NC), Oct 2006 |
| ISBN: |
1-4303-1505-6 |
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Trade paperback, 131 pages, USD $12.45 |
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| Title: |
Zen Again: Ozy and Millie, 2001-2002 |
| Publisher: |
www.ozyandmillie.org (Auburn, WA)/Lulu.com (Raleigh, NC), Mar 2007 |
| ISBN: |
1-4303-1508-3 |
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Trade paperback, 127 pages, USD $12.45 |
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| Title: |
Perpetual Motion: Ozy and Millie, 2002-2003 |
| Publisher: |
www.ozyandmillie.org (Auburn, WA)/Lulu.com (Raleigh, NC), Apr 2007 |
| ISBN: |
1-4303-2116-4 |
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Trade paperback, 127 pages, USD $12.45 |
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Ozy and Millie, starring the two most popular fox cubs on the Internet, has been one of the longest-running web comic strips, since January 1998. It was one of the first Internet strips to appear in book collections. Plan Nine Publishing released five volumes from 2000 to 2003. However, Simpson was unsatisfied with them, and Plan Nine’s announced sixth volume never appeared. Instead, Simpson self-published it through Lulu.com in its ‘workbook’ 81/2" x 11" format. The larger size gave plenty of room for Tofu Knights: Ozy and Millie, 2004-2005 (reviewed in Anthro #6) to print three daily strips per page with a brief commentary under each where appropriate.
Now Simpson has gone back and reorganized the pre-2004 strips into four definitive volumes that contain much more than Plan Nine’s five volumes did. All O&M fans really need these, even if they have the earlier collections.
Ozy and Millie actually began as a strip in Simpson’s weekly Evergreen State College student newspaper, The Cooper Point Journal, a year before it appeared on the Internet. Prehistronics, the comprehensive presentation of Ozy and Millie’s first three and a half years (January 1997 to April 11, 2000), includes those. It encompasses everything in the strip’s original art style. The new material includes Simpson’s earliest rejected character designs, an Ozy and Millie comic book story (“Tales of Planet Q” in Radio Comix’s Furrlough #61, January 1998) and the cover of a photocopied Ozy and Millie strip reprint comic book sold only at Simpson’s local comics shop, an unused book cover for the original second collection, and other unpublished art before Simpson’s mid-April 2000 redesign of the characters. Each one of the comic strips is now annotated.
The strip has always been a mixture of stand-alone gags and story-arcs that run for one or two weeks. Story highlights in Prehistronics include the first meeting of the two fox cubs as eight-year-olds at Seattle’s (fictional) North Harbordale Elementary School, the introductions of their classmates and teachers and their personalities (raccoon Avery’s desperation to become ‘cool’, aardvark Stephan’s geekiness, sheep Felicia’s trendiness, rabbit Jeremy’s bullying, etc.), the revelation of Ozy being the adopted son of a fire-breathing dragon, the establishment of Mr. Llewellyn’s refined style of nonconformity, several encounters with elementary-school bureaucracy (arbitrary authoritarianism, dress codes, pressures to conform, encouragement of the jock mentality, etc), the first of what becomes Ozy’s annual curse of losing his fur, and Millie’s meetings with “the Dread Pirate Captain Locke who lives in the couch”.
Ozy’s first espousals of zen philosophy are in Prehistronics, but his devotion to it (as distinct from just using it for punch lines) only becomes clear in The Big Book of Ancient, Semi-Coherent Wisdom. The title is that of both this second definitive collection, which covers the introduction of Simpson’s revised art style on May 8, 2000 through March 9, 2001, and of the big book of zen wisdom that Ozy carries around for much of this period. Simpson notes that an important result of the redesign was to make the animal children look slightly older, enabling him to upgrade their ages from eight to ten years old and change them for plot purposes from little children to almost-adolescents.
The Big Book reprints the last half of the second Plan Nine collection, Never Mind Pants, and the third, Ink and White Space. Simpson was drawing color Sunday pages during this period which were collected in special color sections at the end of Never Mind Pants and Ink and White Space; here they are in their original chronological order, in grayscale. The surrealistic world of the dragons is established, as Ozy is taken to the Llewellyns’ psychedelic family reunion in a castle in Idaho (where he learns of their ancestral occupation of inventing international conspiracies, and meets his adoptive teen cousin/fiancée Isolde), and as Llewellyn runs for president in 2000 on the People With Nothing To Do ticket with Isolde as his aide. More mundane events include Stephan’s crush on Felicia, Avery’s attempt to create a TV game show, Llewellyn’s personal campaign against intolerance, Millie’s assignment to work on a group project with Felicia, Felicia’s “Millie is a dork” club, Stephan’s running away to the Bay Area’s dot.com heaven, and Millie’s introduction of her “Mr. W” sock puppet. Simpson’s annotations are less frequent in this volume, and many are just variations on pointing out that some topical humor of 2000-’01 can look horribly outdated by 2006. The new material in The Big Book consists of five pages of notebook sketches of the redesigned characters, plus a six-page comic book story that Simpson produced for Plan Nine Publishing’s 2000 Christmas Annual.
The third volume, Zen Again: Ozy and Millie, 2001-2002, contains the strips from March 10, 2001 through May 1, 2002, plus the bonus feature in the fourth Plan Nine collection, Authentic Banana Dye. The original material is Llewellyn’s 8th-grade science project on how to turn gold into cookies. Significant story sequences during this period include Llewellyn’s secession of his home from the U.S. as independent Greater Llewellynland, home schooling for Ozy, the return of Captain Locke with his & Millie’s plan for a revolution in Llewellynland, Ozy’s third bout of fur-loss and its codification as “the annual Llewellyn Hair Curse”, setting up Dream Vacations in Llewellynland, introduction of Stephanie (the female counterpart of Stephan the nerdy aardvark), Ozy’s growing dragon wings and horns, the School Play and Millie’s first kiss, and Llewellyn’s experience with jury duty.
Perpetual Motion: Ozy and Millie, 2002-2003, presents the strips from May 2, 2002 to August 23, 2003, when a hiatus began until January 2004. This completes the replacement of the Plan Nine collections—the remainder of the fourth, Authentic Banana Dye and all of the fifth and final, Om—and brings the strip up to those in the Tofu Knights volume. The original material in this volume is a three-page “Visit Beautiful Greater Lewellynland Official Tourist Guide”, and Simpson’s commentary on the strips. By this point Simpson is only annotating about every third strip; there is not that much to say about every single one of them. The major story sequence in this collection is undoubtedly the revelation of just who Millie’s father was. The rest of the strips are still fun to read despite a few dated topical references; individual references may come and go, but there will always be vapid pop stars, obnoxious TV commercials, and political scandals to parody. Get these four reprint collections, then Tofu Knights: Ozy and Millie, 2004-2005 to bring yourself up to date—why, it’s almost time for the 2006-first-half-of 2007-collection already!
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| Title: |
Under the Lemon Tree |
| Creator: |
Ralph E. Hayes, Jr. |
| Publisher: |
RHJunior Productions (South Charleston, WV)/Lulu.com (Raleigh, NC), Jan 2007 |
| ISBN: |
— |
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Trade Paperback, 162 pages, USD $14.99 |
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In October 2000, Ralph E. Hayes, Jr. created two Internet comic strips, Nip and Tuck and Under the Lemon Tree. In November 2001 he added Tales of the Questor, and for the next four years he became well-known as the artist/writer of those three strips. During late 2004 Under the Lemon Tree introduced a gaming arcade named Goblin Hollow. Then in 2005, Nip and Tuck and Tales of the Questor began to be reprinted in book collections but Under the Lemon Tree did not; and the UTLT strip was renamed for the arcade. Finally, in late 2006, Goblin Hollow was retconned as beginning anew with #1, and the older strips disappeared from the website’s archives. It looked like UTLT was being rewritten out of existence, which was a big disappointment to its fans.
We should have had more faith in REHJr. Under the Lemon Tree has been collected into a book at last. “Enclosed herein: The entire run, from start to finish, of the webcomic known as UNDER THE LEMON TREE,” the blurb says.
UTLT was always the most personal of REHJr.’s three strips. Although it featured an anthropomorphic cast starring the ursine Ben Bruin and his tagalong ‘posse’ of live manifestations of different aspects of his subconscious—Sheldon, his intellect (turtle); Velvet, his ‘inner child’ (bunny); Slick, his machismo (cat); Gunther, his hostility (junkyard dog); Zoot, his ‘wild party’ spirit (wolf cub); Morty, his guilty conscience (vulture); and Piff, his artistic creativity (weasel)—plus a supporting cast of co-employees at a big chain department store—Lily (cougar), Fred (hare), Merry (beaver), Rico (chihuahua), Roz (poodle), and their middle-management boss (beaver)—REHJr. made it clear that many of the events befalling Ben were based on personal experiences, such as his first car falling apart, his getting mugged, his overweight problem, and his childhood and adolescent embarrassments. Other aspects were more fictionalized. Hayes’ series of temporary jobs (beginning, he reveals in his Introduction, with working the graveyard shift at a doughnut shop) became Ben’s steady janitorial job at a Bullseye Department Store (complete non sequitur: did you notice that the Target Stores’ red-&-white bullseye logo is identical to the Peruvian Air Force’s roundel?). His wish for a steady girl friend became Ben’s ongoing romance with Lily Feldspar, who evolved from an idealized stereotype into a girl with a very believable personality. Ben’s getting a gun permit enabled him to become Hayes’ mouthpiece for his opinions about the right to bear arms responsibly. UTLT was an enjoyable mix of only slightly exaggerated social commentary (attending a rave or a s-f convention, dealing with militant protestors, handling arrogant lawyers, etc.) and pure fantasy (having those ‘midgets’ who could disappear at will, who were determined to improve his social life). This book collection has been long overdue.
Under the Lemon Tree is in Lulu.com’s large workbook 81/2" x 11" size, big enough to print four strips per page with annotations under or above them. Readers can watch as Hayes’ art style and storytelling talents improve, from crude (Hayes says some readers initially mistook Ben Bruin for a giant weasel) gag-a-day strips to long story sequences; and as Ben’s and Lily’s romance progresses from generic what-do-I-do-on-our-first-date? humorous scenes to individualized intimate serious romantic pre-marital situations.
Hayes’ growing dissatisfaction with the department-store setting is also evident. The last couple of years’ worth of these strips gets away from the store almost entirely, starting with a long dream sequence that begins with Ben dreaming himself into a Star Wars situation (an authorized borrowing of Howard Taylor’s Schlock Mercenary strip’s space opera setting) and suddenly turns into a surrealistic, solipsistic nightmare that questions Ben’s and his posse’s existence. After a brief return to the department store, this is followed by Ben’s & Lily’s visit to her feline family’s reunion (with some serious commentary on “interspecies” marriages), then by Ben’s flashback experiences with his pal Waarhorse at the MondoCon s-f convention, followed by a dramatic crime-hostage adventure. It seems obvious that Hayes was desperate to take UTLT in a new direction by this point. Having Ben and Lily marry and leave the department store to open the Goblin Hollow gaming arcade was a wise move (although the need to recast the supernatural personality manifestations into ‘real’ physical goblins is still arguable).
Actually, whether this book contains “the entirety of [Goblin Hollow’s] first incarnation,” as the Introduction says, has been a matter of debate on the strip’s discussion website. The book contains all of the strips from its beginning on October 2, 2000 to Lily’s acceptance of Ben’s proposal of marriage on July 7, 2004; almost 500 strips. It then jumps abruptly to the fourteen strips between August 20 and October 18, 2006, explaining REHJr.’s decision to retcon Goblin Hollow, changing the ‘posse people’ from manifestations of Ben’s subconscious (and other people’s; by this time several more characters were revealed to have their own ‘tulpas’, as Hayes was calling them by then) into actual bat-winged, green-skinned goblins that had hatched from eggs. There had been over two hundred strips between August 2004 and August 2006 when Hayes explained this retcon, and Goblin Hollow started its numbering at #1 anew. What about them? Hayes has since reformatted some of them (those that do not feature posse people who would have to be extensively redrawn as goblins) into the new GH sequencing. Presumably he will do the same with as many of the others as possible, although UTLT/GH fans are still nervous that some of the strips that cannot fit conveniently into the new GH will remain forgotten.
At any rate, here is Under the Lemon Tree in its official entirety. If this collection has any problem, it is that Hayes’ annotations taper off and stop halfway into the book, just when the strips begin to show hidden depths. It would have been really enlightening to know what Hayes was thinking when he segued the lighthearted Schlock Mercenary dream into the nightmarish death-urge/Christian salvation/tabula rasa sequence, or when he began the Detective Gelarid vs. Ookami Lobo crime-wave episode that unexpectedly ended with references to mad Tulpa Masters of Tibet plus hints of tulpa powers as real-life superhero/villain abilities. Oh, well. UTLT was one of the more popular Internet strips during the first half of this decade, and is an important prelude to Hayes’ current popular Goblin Hollow strip. Now you can have it in this handy volume for your bookshelf. Don’t miss this opportunity.
Under the Lemon Tree strip for 13 July 2001
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| Title: |
Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 |
| Creator: |
David Petersen |
| Publisher: |
Archaia Studios Press (Fort Lee, NJ), May 2007 |
| ISBN: |
1-932386-57-2 |
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Hardcover, 192 pages, USD $24.95 |
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Mouse Guard, Fall 1152 is the adventure of three warrior mice defending their homeland from a treacherous conspiracy. It is a compilation of the first six issues of a comic book. And this description has probably given you a completely false idea of what this gem of a book is like.
There has never been an independent comic book quite like Mouse Guard. The six issues, published bimonthly by a fine-art studio from February through December 2006, are in a unique format of 8" x 8" booklets of 24 pages plus a wraparound cover each, without any advertising or other interruptions. Each page is attractively arranged in a basic format of a triad of large horizontal or vertical panels, with numerous exceptions including dramatic full-page scenes. Each panel is a detailed painting, not the colored-in line drawings of traditional comic books. The art is large, the pages are narrow-margined, and the paper is of glossy art quality, giving the impression of an art book rather than a comic book; especially with the cover-paintings of the original issues appearing as full-bleed double-page spreads every 24 pages. The six issues collected together comprise a fast-paced 156-page graphic novel, plus 26 pages of new material: a 10-page Epilogue followed by “Maps, Guides, and Assorted Extras”. Total: a 192-page squarish hardbound de luxe art-book that you should not miss! (The description “art-book” rather than “illustrated children’s book” is used deliberately, since Mouse Guard is for older readers more than for children despite its “all ages” label.)
The story is a dramatic heroic fantasy, although shallow. It begins in mid-action, and never slows down enough to allow any character background or development. The Introduction to Chapter One establishes the background:
The mice struggle to live safely and prosper among all of the world’s harsh conditions and predators. Thus the Mouse Guard was formed.
After persevering against a weasel warlord in the winter war of 1149, the territories are no longer as troubled. True, the day-to-day dangers exist, but no longer are the Guard soldiers, instead they are escorts, pathfinders, weather watchers, scouts and body guards for the mice who live among the territories. Many skills are necessary for the guard to keep the borders safe. They must find new safeways and paths from village to village, lead shipments of goods from one town to another and, in case of attack, guard against all evil and harm to their territories.
Three young Guardsmice, Lieam, Kenzie, and Saxon, are sent out to find an old grain-peddler mouse who disappeared while traveling through the forests between the towns of Rootwallow and Barkstone. They discover that the merchant was eaten by a giant (to mice) snake, which they stalk and kill through the course of Chapter One. But hidden in the grain is a map of the defenses of the Mouse Guard’s headquarters, Lockhaven, implying that the peddler was a traitor—but to whom was he betraying the Guild’s secrets, and how close is the unknown enemy to striking? The three investigate the plot, but too late to keep it from breaking out into a bloody civil war and a climactic siege of the Guard’s fortifications in Lockhaven.
Petersen’s art is basically realistic with the lush richness of such classic fantasy illustrators as Arthur Rackham and Ernest Shepard, or more recently Michael Hague and Brian Froud. It is never clarified that the mice’s calendar is ours, but their villages and artifacts have the look of 12th-century northern Europe. The art is dominated by thick autumnal forests filled with leaves turning red, and the dimly-lit interiors of huts, castles and secret passages. The mice are unclothed except for the Guard who wear cloaks as a uniform; it is only possible to tell the three heroes apart by the details that Lieam has reddish fur and wields a broad-bladed dagger, Kenzie is grayish and has a staff, and Saxon is brown and favors a longsword. Other major characters include Gwendolyn, the Matriarch of the Guard; Midnight, the Guard’s weaponsmith; Rand, in charge of Lockhaven’s defenses; Sadie, a scout; and Celanawe, a mysterious old hermit.
Petersen has captured the attention of the comic-book industry during 2006. Mouse Guard has gotten rave reviews from comics-shop proprietors and librarians, mainstream newspaper critics, and Publishers Weekly alike—“Petersen’s character designs are enormously appealing, and the book is hard to put down for that reason. The story is suitable for all ages, and kids in particular should enjoy this adventure.” (PW, April 2007)—and has been included on several best-of lists. This art-book compilation (a first volume; the second story, Mouse Guard, Winter 1152, is due to begin its six-issue serialization in July 2007) may be the beginning of a merchandising blitz. A set of three PVC figurines of Lieam, Kenzie, and Saxon has been announced for August or September sales, with plushies and more to follow. Get the book that is the basis of it all.
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| Title: |
The Prisoner’s Release and Other Stories |
| Author: |
Kyell Gold |
| Illustrators: |
Vince Suzukawa, Taurin Fox, Adam Wan, Arthur Husky |
| Publisher: |
Sofawolf Press (St. Paul, MN), Jan 2007 |
| ISBN: |
0-9769212-7-8 |
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Trade paperback, xii + 287 pages, USD $19.95 |
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Notice on the publishers’ website: Volle is a romance novel intended for an adult audience only and contains some explicit sexual scenes of a primarily Male/Male nature. It is not for sale to persons under the age of 18.
This warning for Volle (reviewed in Anthro #7) is equally true for The Prisoner’s Release and Other Stories. It fits in the genre of ‘anthropomorphic gay erotica’; very well-written, but definitely in the X-rated category. Readers who want high-quality anthropomorphic literature will have to decide for themselves whether such explicit homoeroticism is to their tastes.
The Prisoner’s Release was Kyell Gold’s first story featuring his faux-Renaissance-era red fox hero Volle. The novella was serialized in the first two issues of Sofawolf Press’ erotic anthropomorphic magazine Heat, January and July 2004. The fox and his world were too complex to leave in this one story, and Gold found himself writing the novels Volle (2005) and Pendant of Fortune (2006) to relate Volle’s adventures before and after The Prisoner’s Release. But that story did not fit into either novel, yet it was too short to reprint as a separate book so the complete saga of Volle could be shelved together. Gold’s solution has been to write three new short works set around “The Prisoner’s Release”, to expand the background depicted in Volle and to produce enough fiction to fill a third book to fit between the first two.
Inside the Cage, the opening and longest story (147 pages), begins in The Jackal’s Staff, the male brothel in Tephos’ capital city, Divalia, where much of Volle takes place. Jonas, a young cougar, wants a better future for himself than as one of the Staff’s male prostitutes. When he falls in love with Alexan, a fox merchant from neighboring Ferrenis, Jonas runs away from the Staff to accompany Alexan back to Ferrenis’ capital, Caril. But Jonas soon discovers that his romantic feelings for Alexan are not returned. Thrown on his own in a foreign city, Jonas knows only one way to make a living; going into prostitution for himself:
Jonas managed a grin, and Mikka [grey fox] hoisted himself onto the counter, curling his tail around behind him. His muzzle was closer to level with Jonas’ now. “Oh, I’m just kidding.” He grinned back at Jonas. “So you want to start a business. Have you thought about where your customers will come from? With your talents, you could be very successful, but if nobody knows about you, then nobody will pay you.”
The fox was waiting for him to jump into the conversation, Jonas could see, and after a moment he figured out why. His father had brought him along on some business meetings at a very young age, hoping he’d show some interest in the business, or the numbers. Or anything. Jonas remembered one thing his father had told him, that the most important things said in business deals were not spoken aloud. He’d never really gotten the hang of the numbers, but he had been able to read people fairly well, a skill which he carried over into his other line of work. Here, Mikka’s body language was telling him that the fox didn’t want to be the one to make the first offer. “I’d need someone to help me get some customers. Would you be able to help? I’d pay you.”
“I believe I could.” Mikka examined his claws. “I would want a quarter of whatever they pay you.”
His father had sometimes paid commissions or “finder’s fees” for people who brought him business. “Just the ones you send me?”
“Just the ones I send you.” (pg. 85)
The Prisoner’s Release (about 50 pages) is set around five years after the events in Volle. It opens with Volle in chains in the dungeons of Divalia’s palace, about to be sexually abused by a new guard. But this is no torture for Volle at all:
Today the guard who stepped into the windowless cell wasn’t Limp Stripes. He was a young white wolf, white all over except for a little streak of black down his left hip that Volle could see clearly because he wasn’t wearing a shirt.
He wasn’t wearing a shirt.
And he was gorgeous. (pg. 151)
How Volle has finally become a prisoner of his enemy, Dereath Talison (a rat, who is Tephos’ junior Minister of Defense), is revealed as prisoner and guard slowly become lovers. The white wolf, Streak, helps Volle to escape after he realizes that Dereath intends to kill him. The Prisoner’s Release segues directly into the next story, Home Again (about 25 pages). Back home in Ferrenis after six years, Volle is unsure what lies ahead for him—and where Streak will fit into his new life:
Volle turned and padded over the soft wooden floor to sit beside the wolf. He looked at the white fur, candlelight flickering across it, but didn’t say anything.
Streak turned to nuzzle him. “Are you sad I came with you?”
“No!” Volle leaned against him. “I’m sorry, I just don’t know what I’m going to do now. I didn’t think when I dragged you away that I didn’t know what I was getting you into.” (pg. 205)
For Love or Family, the final story (about 70 pages), is the only one narrated in the first person. It returns to Divalia and The Jackal’s Staff. Cefalo, the 15-year-old youngest son of Lord Fardew, Tephos’ wolf Minister of Defense, is dared by his older brothers to spend a night at the brothel. The adolescent has been too young to be interested in sex, except to know that he is completely uninterested in the political marriage that his parents are trying to push him into; but when he meets the young wolf Richy at the Staff, he knows that he has met his life’s mate. Cef is despondent because he knows his family will never allow him to have a professional prostitute as a homosexual lover, but his father’s assistant Dereath is unexpectedly sympathetic:
“Another lovely ball and chain?”
“What?”
“It’s a shame,” he purred softly, “that such a passionate, lovely cub should be tied down for family reasons. Where’s the justice? Where’s your freedom?”
“Well…” He was articulating all of my own adolescent cries, and I had to take the part of my family. “It’s my duty…”
“What about Kigi and his duty?” I shook my head. “And so the burden falls to you. After all, your poor brother Rashi … is not as discreet as you are.”
“Well, there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
“But there is.” He leaned closer. (pg. 260)
Readers of Volle, The Prisoner’s Release and (especially) Pendant of Fortune will be sure that Dereath has an ulterior motive, and of course he does. This story shows what happens to Richy, one of the more sympathetic characters introduced in Volle.
Each story is illustrated by a different artist. Vince Suzukawa has five full-page drawings for the first; Taurin Fox has five half-page drawings for the second; Adam Wan has one for the third; and Arthur Husky provides three full-pages for the last. Suzukawa’s and Husky’s are pen-&-ink work, Fox’s seem like monochrome wash drawings, and Wan’s looks like a full-color painting reproduced in grayscale.
Fans of Gold’s two novels will certainly want to read this collection. Gold’s writing is of the same high level. The collection adds important details about supporting characters and locales, as well as much rich description about the Panbestian religion and other aspects of this anthropomorphic culture. Readers unfamiliar with these books should definitely begin with the novel Volle, which introduces the fox spy/nobleman and others whose adventures are continued in The Prisoner’s Release and Other Stories.
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| Title: |
Song of the Crow |
| Author: |
Layne Maheu |
| Illustrations: |
19th century engravings |
| Publisher: |
Unbridled Books (Denver), Jun 2006 |
| ISBN: |
1-932961-18-6 |
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Hardcover, [5 +] 244 [+ 2] pages, USD $23.95 |
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According to Genesis, when the forty days and nights of rain stopped, Noah first sent a raven out from the ark to look for land. The raven never returned. Layne Maheu’s Biblical novel postulates that it was really a crow, I Am, that the raven tricked Noah into sending out in his place. Song of the Crow retells the story of the Flood and of Noah’s ark from an entirely corvid viewpoint, as I Am’s autobiography.
I Am’s first memories, as a hatchling in the tall tree called Our Giant, are of the surrounding trees being chopped down by an animal that his fellow crows call Keeyaw. Keeyaw is at first just an annoyance as I Am and his nestling brother The Other learn the ways of crows from their mother, Our Many, and father, Fly Home:
In Keeyaw’s absence, the woods remembered their silence.
It was the hot, brooding silence of insects, and the silence of small songbirds high in the branches of the sweltering heat. They remained hidden from sight as if the treetops themselves chirped vacuously back and forth. And a strange inner weather began to affect Our Many’s eyes, the spell of an old mother crow, which was what she was. Later in life, I would find the large winter roosts filled with elder siblings of mine, crows from all ends of the wind, all of them singing out variations of her song. Our mother had lived long enough and had enough nests to be known as a mother of many, a great-grandmother over and over again, and though I have yet to meet another mother of many, I’ve heard of others. Every crow’s song includes at least one. Our stout, imperious mother had outlived two mates. Our father was her third. And like gurgling water from a waterfall, Our Many came down to us, and my brother and I—we opened our beaks to the sky, and waited. (pg. 15)
This indifference changes after Keeyaw chops down I Am’s tree. The crow becomes obsessed with spying upon the human. I Am soon learns that Keeyaw is not a normal human, most of which seem to march together in armies which constantly kill each other in Great Offerings of carrion, to the crows’ delight:
[…] I learned that not all humans fell trees, and that the beast humans’ army overflowed with the rich wounds of kindness. Less than a day’s flight ahead was another such beast of a thousand heads, waiting for the time of the Great Offering, when the ground would swell with their numbers. For three days we feasted on nothing but the flesh of this tasty creature—eye tissue and innards and all sorts of tender delectables. And for days after that, strips of its fat and gristle hung in the woods all around us, hidden there to be eaten later. (pg. 29)
Anthro fans may prefer I Am’s descriptions of crow society with his half-siblings and other crows like Old Bone, before he becomes wrapped up with the ark and the flood:
Before the hawk could finish scanning all around itself, a whirl of black beating wings fell over us. The hawk flew off in a confused screech. It was Night Time. Plum Black was with him, too, and they cried, “Get!”
“What? Are you going to lie there until he comes back!?”
We flew off to a tree covered by denser trees, and Plum Black preened the drops of blood off my neck.
“I thought you were already nothing but song,” she said, “after I heard you sing the Parting from This Earth. Then I saw the hawk. Look.” And she pulled some loose hawk down from the corners of my beak. “You must have bitten him once or twice.” (pg. 69)
I Am is the only stowaway on the ark, if ‘stowaway’ is the right word since he is sent onto the ark against his will by the God Crow. It is unclear whether the God Crow is a parallel god for crows, or the one God as He appears to crows; but it is clear that I Am is an unwilling draftee. He did not know Keeyaw’s human name until told by the God Crow, who enables him (sometimes through the intermediary of a semi-messianic crow named Hookbill the Haunted) to understand human speech:
“Good man, Noah,” God called back in Its commanding, reedy caw, then spread Its mighty span and took to the air.
[…]
This Noah—why had God the Crow called him Noah?—picked up the frayed ends of the vines lashed to his feet, severed now where the great God Crow had worked Its magic […] (pgs. 76-77)
Song of the Crow is not a pretty novel. Crows are carrion scavengers, and there are plenty of raw, bleeding guts and rotting innards to attract I Am, both before and during the flood:
The crowd began yelling threats about the beasts on board, and how the ark had filled with vermin when Noah wasn’t looking, and how they’d fix that.
But the one they called Noah spoke. “You are too many for me to fight back, even if I wanted. But also, you are too many for the ark. It will not survive your numbers.”
And the full herd of humans moved—slowly at first, then with much shoving and incidents of flying fists, and individuals flung down, and many trodden underfoot. There was a great panic to reach the ramp before the others. […]
Pushed by the advancing waters, many of the earth’s last beasts had gathered on the outskirts of Noah’s rookery, including the largest of God’s creation. As if on command, these hippos and buffalos stepped between the ark and the mob of hysterical beastmen. The great brown bear, destined to be ravaged by the flood and sucked into the bubbles, stood before the entrance of salvation and roared. An enormous tiger leapt up into the throng, affixed his teeth into the skull of a human, and dragged the fresh corpse into the thicket. Wolves and lions tore the fleeing humans to pieces, and dispersed the rest. Elk, boar, and bull ran through the crowd, goring men and women and hurling them aside, and the human herds broke out into a mass scurrying. Soon the field before Noah’s ark became empty again, except for a low, guttural rumbling underground, which was the flood drawing near. (pgs. 132-133)
I Am never seems to know why he is called by the God Crow to hide alone on the ark. Indeed, he serves no clear purpose other than to enable Maheu to relate all that happens on the ark through the eyes of an uncaged outsider, flitting about throughout the vast darkened hold, and to describe the desolate, sodden earth after he is thrown out in the raven’s place. Song of the Crow is most imaginative in its consistent retelling of this well-known story from a crow’s viewpoint, such as referring to the ark as Noah’s “rookery”.
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| Title: |
Mus of Kerbridge |
| Author: |
Paul Kidd |
| Publisher: |
Kitsune Press (Perth)/Lulu.com (Raleigh, NC), Mar 2007 |
| ISBN: |
1-84753-291-8 |
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Trade paperback, 363 pages, USD $24.50 |
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If one defines a literary classic as ‘a story that stays in print’, then there are very few anthropomorphic classics. Many excellent novels have been published once, and are only available after they go out of print if you can find a used copy.
But sometimes a good book is lucky. That is the case with Paul Kidd’s Mus of Kerbridge currently. It was published as a TSR Books paperback in April 1995, and has been available only as a used book for most of the past decade (although, thanks to Amazon.com’s posting of used book sales, copies have been fairly easy to find). Now Kidd has started his own imprint, Kitsune Press, to publish his books, and one of his first titles is a new edition of Mus of Kerbridge.
Reviewing the first edition in Yarf! #37, I wrote:
This first novel reads like a cross between Brian Jacques, Georgette Heyer, and Rafael Sabatini. If you can imagine a rough parallel of the European wars of the 17th century being fought between intermixed armies of humans and the creatures of faerie, you’ve got the general idea. But there are no anthropomorphic animals—until the creation of Mus, a common mouse sorcererously bioengineered to become a tiny, furry Cavalier knight.
The date is specified as 1641 and 1642, although the geopolitical situation is closer to the 1670s. The names and monarchs are different, but Duncruigh, Nantierre, and Welfland are obviously Britain, France and the United Provinces. When Welfland collapses into violent civil war, the progressive revolutionaries gain support from Duncruigh. This is all that Nantierre’s aggressive young ruler needs to ‘come to the rescue’ of Welfland. As the novel begins, Nantierre is completing the defeat of Duncruigh’s expeditionary army and Welfland’s last revolutionary troops, and the repressive occupation of Welfland in the name of a new puppet king who is no more than a Nantierran viceroy; and is turning Welfland’s large merchant fleet into an armada for the invasion of Duncruigh itself.
But this is a world shared equally by humans, centaurs, satyrs, pixies, and similar creatures of mythology. All are social equals, in a human-based civilization. Think here of Donna Barr’s Stinz series, about rural centaurs living in a late 19th-century or early 20th-century Teutonic society. Some species gravitate toward roles suited to their specialties—the harpies make good aerial scouts and ‘air couriers’, while the centaurs excel as cavalry shock troops—but there appear to be no interspecies prejudices. There are humans, centaurs, etc., etc., among both the nobility and commoners of all nations.
There is also magic. Kerbridge is an old Duncruighan river and university town (Oxford?) whose centaur baron served as commander of the royal armies on the continent. (pg. 7; 2007 ed. pg. 11) Nantierre tries to strike at him through his family at Kerbridge Castle. A spy hires Pin-William, an inept satyr sorcerer, to magically get into the castle. He tries to use a mouse as his remote-controlled agent. The brain & body of the natural mouse are too crude, so its mind must be enhanced and its body anthropomorphized to understand and carry out their orders. But the brave mouse, Mus, is strong-willed enough to throw off Pin-William’s control. He saves the baron’s daughter, young Lady Miriam, and the two become firm friends who turn the Nantierrans’ trick back on themselves, using Mus as a tiny spy to uncover enemy agents within the Duncruighan Parliament.
Mus is a delightfully anthropomorphized character. Readers will be amused and enchanted by his adjustment to his altered body and mind, his efforts to fit into the ‘human’ society that is now his, and his exasperated attempts to get people to take him seriously as a wanna-be knight in the king’s service. And Mus finds that he is not the only ’morph, after Pin-William attempts to create new animal puppet-slaves without Mus’ “flaws” of independence.
What about the half-animals? Virtually all other major characters are centaurs or satyrs, with humans, harpies, and others playing only minor roles. Kidd deftly spins a Cavalier-era melodrama full of elegant court intrigue, romance, duels, and knowledgeable 17th-century military action. However, aside from providing colorful decor, there is little need for any characters to be centaurs or satyrs dressed in ruffles and lace. At least Kidd avoids the inconsistencies of less-skilled writers who put half-animals into architecture and clothing designed for humans. The most satisfying scene to take practical note of their physical differences is the Channel naval battle which presages the Nantierran invasion of Duncruigh:
A huge black figure staggered out onto the deck, its hooves skittering for purchase on the wooden planks. Torscha Retter hunched his huge shoulders against a fresh onslaught of spray. A ship is not a natural environment for half-horses, and Torscha’s hooves were hard put to keep purchase on the slippery, rolling deck. He watched in silence as human sailors swarmed nimbly up into the rigging. (pg. 189; 2007 ed. pg. 217)
Kidd makes you believe that centaurs can participate in stormy, deck-tossing naval action without falling all over themselves. Mus of Kerbridge is not a comedy, but it certainly blends a sense of humor with its melodrama. It is full of impish, tongue-in-cheek action, led by little Mus who is determined to out-swashbuckle every other knight in Duncruigh.
I enjoyed Mus of Kerbridge as much upon rereading it today as when I first read it twelve years ago. It is a delightful fantasy, which may be much more anthropomorphic than I give it credit for being, if in your opinion centaurs, fauns, harpies, and pixies (moth-humans: The creature that held him had the slit-pupils of a cat. Above the giant’s angular face there sprouted a pair of delicate, feathery antennae—just like those of some enormous moth—and great, gauzy wings jutted from below his shoulderblades. [pg. 72]) count as anthropomorphized animals. If you missed this novel in 1995, you now have another chance to get it. Do not miss it again.
Dragon Champion, Book One of The Age of Fire (reviewed in Anthro #7), was the story of the dragon Auron’s adventures among the animals, elves, dwarves, humans, and blighters (roughly a cross between dwarves and humans) in a world similar to Tolkien’s Middle Earth. (There are raccoons, strictly a North American animal.) Auron and his sister Wistala are apparently the only survivors of their family after their parents and siblings are slaughtered in their mountain cavern home by bloodthirsty dwarves. The two hatchlings escape but are almost immediately separated. The first novel follows Auron as he grows into flying, flaming adulthood, always following two goals: to find Wistala, and to discover why dragonkind is dwindling to the point of extinction.
Dragon Avenger, Wistala’s story, is divided into three Books as was the first volume. Hatchling, about the newly-hatched infant dragons, mostly retells the same events but from Wistala’s rather than Auron’s perspective, until their separation. Wistala discovers that their father, AuRel, is not quite dead yet, and has some important final discussions with him. Drakka, about Wistala’s life as a dragon from childhood—“That’s a dragon?” one of the men said. “I’ve yearling pigs that weigh more.” (pg. 174)—to adolescence, introduces her into the main story about elves, men, and dwarves: their societies and politics. Despite her pledge to herself to remain uninvolved in the affairs of non-dragons, she makes both friends and enemies among all three species of hominids (blighters, the fourth species prominent in Dragon Champion, are largely absent here), developing loyalties which bind her to reluctant actions. Dragonelle, when Wistala’s wings grow out and she becomes a flying adult, large enough to carry a man, brings those events to a dramatic climax.
As with Dragon Champion, the dragons’ ability to speak all animals’ languages introduces several other talking animals. The main ones are Bartleghaff the condor:
“Father, I’ll be right back. I’m going to help you.”
[…]
She looked up at the condor. “Fair warning! I see any of you pecking at him, I’ll be venting feathers for a week.”
“Perish the thought.” The condor fluffed up his feathers and settled. “I’m eager to see how you manage this.” (pg. 46)
Yari-Tab the cat:
The eyes came out into the moonlight, walking along the wall. Wistala read the thin orange-striped silhouette from whiskers to long twitching tail. “A word of advice. Never ask a softstalker whether she’s a feline or not. If she is, you may admire at leisure. If she isn’t, you’ll just shame her. My name is Yari Sunwarm Fourth Orangedaughter, born this spring here in Tumbledown, and I’ve never seen anything dumb enough to swallow metal before. Even dogs are brighter. Did you think it a beetle?” (pg. 67)
and:
“With every word, it became easier to understand the cat. Wistala wasn’t sure if they were speaking Feline or Drakine or some simplified version blending the two. Their slit-pupiled eyes regarded each other in the darkness. (pg. 72)
And Stog the mule:
Next Stog was there, the bonfire revealing the mud on his sides and the filth about his hooves, a broken rope dangling. “Wistala. Strange fortune brings us together again. Forgive—”
Feeney and Jessup just stared in wonder at the mule, nickering and tossing his head at the drakka.
“No time for words, Stog. Do you wish to return to Mossbell?”
“Is clover sweet? Of course.”
“Then you can do me a favor, and bear a broken back.”
“I’ll carry the master to the icy tundra if I must, and stomp any –” (pg. 168)
Also as with the first novel, Dragon Avenger does not really get interesting until its dragon protagonist gets involved with the hominids. Wistala is rescued after her Father’s death by someone she did not know could exist: a friendly elf; Rainfall, the scholarly master of book-filled Mossbell estate. He is officially a knight and former judge of the Hypatian Empire, but like the crumbling Roman Empire of the fifth century A.D., these are mostly empty titles meaning little but a self-imposed and doomed obligation to preserve civilization from encroaching barbarian chaos:
“Correct me if I err. Hypatia is all the lands between the Inland Ocean and the mountains?”
“Once it was much more. It ringed all the Inland Ocean like a necklace. But the necklace’s caretakers let it fragment, and others have grasped at the loosened jewels. Most are gone now, and even the chain is breaking. Once you were a Citizen of Hypatia first, and only a man, elf, or dwarf second. But tribalism has taken over since then, between the conniving Wheel of Fire [dwarves] and that madman Praskall howling up his humanist mobs in the Varvar lands. I fear I’ll live to see the last few jewels of Hypatia torn and stolen.” (pg. 108)
Wistala cares little for the traditions and politics of hominids, but she grows to love the kindly elf who adopts her as his legal daughter and heir. She protects his lands, and those of the human commoners who depend on him, from the depredations of a troll. Later she brings Rainfall buried treasure from the ruins of an ancient city (fighting off hostile neighboring nobles who would steal it for themselves), so he can buy himself out from unjust taxation and improve his lands. His neighbors come to respect Wistala as he does, and soon the Green Dragon Inn is built in her honor. But Lord Hammar, the nominal Thane and local overlord, is openly greedy for their wealth. Hypatian law technically protects them from outright seizure, but Hammar makes no secret of his plans to abandon the obselete title of a rural Hypatian lord in favor of declaring himself an independent (and despotic) king; and especially no longer bound to honor the obligation to respect a dragon as a Hypatian Citizen.
When the Wheel of Fire dwarves slaughter Wistala’s family in the opening chapters, she wants revenge against them. But her dying Father has very paternalistic ideas about females declaring a blood feud:
“I’ll avenge it, Father, if it comes to that.”
“Were-oaths and corpse-curses are for drakes and dragons, daughter. Dragonelles get their vengeance by seeing clutches of eggs laid to take the place of the assassinated.”
“I told you that you should have let him be,” the condor said.
Father blew his nostrils out at the condor. “Only thing that’ll change the mind of a dragonelle of Irelia’s line is herself, Bartleghaff,” Father said.
“You know that old buzzard?”
Bartleghaff squawked: “Condor!”
“Know him?” Father snorted. “He’s my oldest friend.”
“Friend? You were waiting to eat him!” Wistala said to the condor.
“Of course he was,” Father said. “I wouldn’t want some stranger getting the best bits. Who better than an old skymate to serve the dragon-wake.” (pg. 54)
Wistala reluctantly sets aside her vow of vengeance out of respect for her Father’s wishes. But passing on the vengeance to male children seems increasingly unlikely as years go by without her meeting any other dragons with whom to mate. As Wistala comes to accept life as Rainfall’s beloved dragon-daughter, and settle into a pleasant routine among the hominids—even joining the elf Ragwrist’s Circus as an Oracle for awhile—she tries to live non-violently as her new foster-father wishes. But when Rainfall’s human enemies finally overcome her ability to protect him, Wistala is freed to restoke her thirst for vengeance, combining her enmity against the human barbarians with her long-delayed revenge upon the seemingly-impregnable Wheel of Fire dwarf tribe of King Gobold Fangbreaker.
Dragon Avenger ends with a satisfactory conclusion, but with Wistala still searching for Auron, and the reason for the dragons’ disappearance unsolved. Book Three of The Age of Fire will be Dragon Outcast, scheduled for a December 2007 release.
Anthropomorphic books for review should be sent to Fred Patten, at:
Golden State Colonial Convalescent Hospital, 10830 Oxnard Street, North Hollywood, CA, 91606
