Scan barcode
A review by xterminal
Dog Blood by David Moody
3.0
David Moody, Dog Blood (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010)
Unlike (I assume) most prospective readers of Moody's latest, Dog Blood, I have not read its prequel, Hater. (And judging by Dog Blood's end, I'm going to posit that this is the middle book in a pending trilogy.) I am familiar with moody through the Autumn quartet, which I read four or five years ago and which have become something of a self-publishing success story, not only launching what has since become one of the most popular small horror presses in existence but also gaining Moody a contract with a major house. Which brings us to Dog Blood, the first book Moody has produced for Thomas Dunne (which previously re-released Hater).
Dog Blood focuses on Danny McCoyne, one of the Haters, humans infected with a virus that drives them to kill anyone uninfected (the Haters call them the Unchanged). There are varying levels of Hate infection; Danny, for example, is still reasonable and intelligent, while others are what the Hater community calls Brutes, who have lost all reason and exist only to kill. (Hate infection is paralleled with addiction a number of times in the book, and Moody does an interesting job of drawing the distinction between maintenance addicts and junkies, if only anyone would listen.) The driving force in Danny's life is to find his daughter Ellis, also a Hater, and who has been missing since the initial outbreak of Hate four months previous. Meanwhile, a large number of the Unchanged have barricaded themselves inside the confines of a small city, and we get various updates on the state of life among the humans as we go on. You know these two storylines are going to collide eventually, and while it's kind of predictable, I love the connection Moody makes between them. Also, as in the Autumn novels, the guy really, really knows how to write a satisfying-yet-ambiguous-and-really-downbeat ending.
A lot of the same problems I had with the Autumn quartet I had with Dog Blood. The writing is decent, if nothing spectacular; when you look at Moody's self-published work, it stands head and shoulders above much of the vanity/self-published stuff simply because Moody can actually write. Put him up against the bigs, however, and the shortcomings become clear pretty quick. Moody's writing is readable enough and well-paced, but it's often emotionless and always far more concerned with advancing the plot than with characterization. I rush to add this is not always a bad thing in genre fiction, and it's a lot less crucial here (where plot is king) than it was in the Autumn novels (which are much slower and focus more on character). Readable it is; I blew through it in an afternoon after finishing another short book. I wonder if I'd have gotten more out of it had I previously read Hater, but can't really answer that question for obvious reasons. To be on the safe side, I'll tell you that if this one interests you, go ahead and grab Hater first. ***
Unlike (I assume) most prospective readers of Moody's latest, Dog Blood, I have not read its prequel, Hater. (And judging by Dog Blood's end, I'm going to posit that this is the middle book in a pending trilogy.) I am familiar with moody through the Autumn quartet, which I read four or five years ago and which have become something of a self-publishing success story, not only launching what has since become one of the most popular small horror presses in existence but also gaining Moody a contract with a major house. Which brings us to Dog Blood, the first book Moody has produced for Thomas Dunne (which previously re-released Hater).
Dog Blood focuses on Danny McCoyne, one of the Haters, humans infected with a virus that drives them to kill anyone uninfected (the Haters call them the Unchanged). There are varying levels of Hate infection; Danny, for example, is still reasonable and intelligent, while others are what the Hater community calls Brutes, who have lost all reason and exist only to kill. (Hate infection is paralleled with addiction a number of times in the book, and Moody does an interesting job of drawing the distinction between maintenance addicts and junkies, if only anyone would listen.) The driving force in Danny's life is to find his daughter Ellis, also a Hater, and who has been missing since the initial outbreak of Hate four months previous. Meanwhile, a large number of the Unchanged have barricaded themselves inside the confines of a small city, and we get various updates on the state of life among the humans as we go on. You know these two storylines are going to collide eventually, and while it's kind of predictable, I love the connection Moody makes between them. Also, as in the Autumn novels, the guy really, really knows how to write a satisfying-yet-ambiguous-and-really-downbeat ending.
A lot of the same problems I had with the Autumn quartet I had with Dog Blood. The writing is decent, if nothing spectacular; when you look at Moody's self-published work, it stands head and shoulders above much of the vanity/self-published stuff simply because Moody can actually write. Put him up against the bigs, however, and the shortcomings become clear pretty quick. Moody's writing is readable enough and well-paced, but it's often emotionless and always far more concerned with advancing the plot than with characterization. I rush to add this is not always a bad thing in genre fiction, and it's a lot less crucial here (where plot is king) than it was in the Autumn novels (which are much slower and focus more on character). Readable it is; I blew through it in an afternoon after finishing another short book. I wonder if I'd have gotten more out of it had I previously read Hater, but can't really answer that question for obvious reasons. To be on the safe side, I'll tell you that if this one interests you, go ahead and grab Hater first. ***