I know that's a much longer-than-usual summary than I do for most my book reviews, but there's a lot of factors to take into account in this series and even just this first installment. The politics in the canine communities, with the painted dog police reigning supreme and mixed packs being looked down upon. The fact that (aside from the children) there seem to be some humans left in the city. The food dispensaries slowly malfunctioning, leading to starvation. The implication that the dogs are actually eating human meat from the dispensaries. The philosophies domestic dogs have about the other canines and how they're bound to their humans. The arrival of malformed hyenas that ravage the canines, including one of Mhumhi's siblings. The revelation that these talking canines are the result of a human experiment known as IntelliDogs. And, at last, the kidnapping of both the human children and Mhumhi by a seemingly new group of people that has some sort of control over the hyenas at the end of the book.
There's just a lot of stuff going on both in the foreground and background, and no explicit answers are given most of the time. And even the ones that seemingly are explicit are sometimes counteracted in this book or even future installments. So you're constantly on your toes to find out what's next and what is the actual truth.
Also, our characters are pretty great. Well, some of them. The book has a mercilessly small main cast. There's some side characters, but even those usually have a rather small presence. Which I think works because Mhumhi's pack (human children included) is supposed to be a key element of the story.
For our mains we have Mhumhi, our young-adult painted dog learning to look after himself and his family; Kutta, the friendly and tolerant older sister; Sacha, a sharp-tongued bush dog with a heart of gold; Tareq and Maha, the two human children the pack is tasked with protecting; and Kebero, a very minor character who is the youngest of the canine siblings.
I like Mhumhi a lot. He's a bit of a mama's boy, and he's very flawed. He's not a perfect protagonist and does do wrong and/or selfish things from time to time, which is good and honestly fitting to the story. Kutta was one of my favorites. She's much more tolerant of certain people or situations than Sacha, but she will still speak up and snap at others from time to time. Sacha, though she died rather early on in the story, was my favorite. Very sarcastic and snappish but you absolutely know she's only doing it because she cares so much for her siblings. I also liked how she seems to be the only one of the canine siblings who hold some animosity towards her adoptive mother, who stole all of them from their biological mothers. Both Mhumhi and Kutta acknowledge that this was (obviously) wrong of Pariah, but at the same time they absolutely loved their only maternal figure in life. Kebero is the latest addition to the mixed canine pack, however he doesn't really have much of a role or character to him. All we know about him is that he has a speech impediment.
The human children, Maha and Tareq, are also rather interesting. I don't recall reading exactly where they come from, but we know that Maha lived with both other canines and humans before being taken in by Pariah (and thus eventually the mixed pack). Maha is the one out of the two who has the most personality, and she bonds quite a bit with Mhumhi, which is nice. Tareq is the younger one of the two, and he honestly doesn't really have all that much of a presence, much like Kebero. He's just kind of there as an additional human character in the main cast.
Other characters we meet are the painted dog police pack (ACAB definitely applies in this case), who hunt down any humans they see and, yes, eat them. We also meet Bisquit and his human Lamya, two disillusioned characters who are fed up with the way the world is. And finally, another major character we have is Bii, a spying and double-crossing bat-eared fox. I liked him initially, as he's a good addition to the mixed pack at first and looks after Kebero as if he were his own son, however he's quickly revealed to be an untrustworthy character.
One element I liked in this book is how it really illustrated the differences in philosophies between the domestics and the wild dogs. The domestics are most often very loyal to their humans and see themselves as their servants, not equals. They're willing to go against their own kind to provide for their humans (e.g. Biscuit being okay with his person eating dogs to survive).
The wild dogs, meanwhile, are very unaccustomed to the presence of humans and quite frankly often just don't know what to do with them. Mhumhi is (especially at first) very ambivalent towards Maha and Tareq, and even after growing to love them like siblings both he and Kutta are still wild animals. They do sometimes snap and them. Heck, Kutta, the more tolerant of the two, even (purely out of instinct) bites Tareq at one point. The children seem to want to treat the dogs (somewhat) like actual dogs, rather than the wild animals (ableit talking intelligent ones) they are.
Oh, that's also something to bring up: the canines in this aren't just speaking in a "dog language" with stuff like barking and growling that has been translated to the viewer into English (e.g. Survivors). They actually talk. They do have their own language, Dog, but's very much a spoken language. Dogs can communicate with humans and vice versa. Heck, there's even some dogs (domestics) that speak the old human tongue. How exactly this came about is still left up to interpretation, but it has something to do with humans (in the past) genetically altering domestic dogs to be able to talk.
Overall, this was a good first book. It has plenty of mysteries to keep the reader engaged and isn't afraid to touch on the darker subjects. Of course, this does mean it's unsuitable for younger or squeamish readers, but if you think you can handle it I do absolutely recommend picking up at least the first book to see if you can get into it.
Rating: 4/5
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