This week we review King of Dogs by Andy Edwards
Much in the way its Soviet counterpart had fallen some decades prior, the American Empire was long dead by the time jackals emerged in the first decades of the new millennium to devour the Republic’s corpse.
The bad survivalist fiction is: “look at me, here is my definitely-not-a-self-insert character, and now - poof! - I get to show the world what an awesome gunfighting ninja I am, kill everybody, save my family or some hot chick, and I’m the smartest guy in the world, and we totally survive.” This is not that.
Grayson is the classic manly character of the man who’s lost everything: a child who was stillborn, a wife who’s gone (it’s not even clear if she left, or went off to kill herself), no family at all beyond this one friend, Jack, who’s now dying. Jack was an American Special Operations soldier who trained him up on cool-guy spec-ops stuff, and the last thing Jack does is ask Grayson: will you promise to go see about my brother?
The novel is set in the near future, where things are kind of gradually falling apart. It’s not the sudden zombie apocalypse or the high-altitude EMP that survivalist fiction usually reaches for, but more like Russia in the 90s.
Jack’s brother is in Moab, Utah, with a baby on the way, so Grayson goes down to look after him. Before long, the town gets invaded by shadowy mercenaries trying to steal the Colorado River. Grayson, who’s been set up as the mastermind of the local militias, gets captured and turned loose with a knife so the private military’s dogs and special operators can hunt him down for sport.
But Grayson is basically a human dog, himself. His loyalty is absolute, and when he sets out to do something, he is absolutely going to do it, or die trying.
Western man owes his existence to dogs. In my particular worldview, it’s neither contradiction nor exaggeration to say that dogs are a direct gift from God. That’s why we don’t kill dogs.
Despite the title being about dogs, it’s actually not for furries.
Mentioned in this episode: Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men, and The 13th Grade’s review of Crowbar, Edwards’s other novel.
Join us next time for Roots Down to Hell by Matthew Louis.
