The Dog Stars

[SheilaT]

by Peter Heller.

Almost finished. It's incredible. It's in the post-apocalypse genre. Some 99% of people were killed by a flu of some kind, and most of the survivors have a blood disease that will kill them.

I happen to really like that genre, and this is a good one.

[Curmudgeoness]

1. Thanks for the tip.

I am glad that you enjoyed it. Is it as good as King's "The Stand"? I also read some in this genre, but find that it usually depresses me to think of how people will act in these situations.....and I always hope that I am not one of the survivors, but with my luck....

[SheilaT]

2. It is vastly better than "The Stand".

Also, vastly different. The King book has a huge cast of characters. This one has only two, with a handful of walk-ons, in the first half of the book and then two more.

[Curmudgeoness]

3. You have me intrigued.

I love "The Stand"....but you are right, keeping up with all the characters is a challenge.

[SheilaT]

4. Other than lots of people being killed off by a superflu,

the two books have nothing in common. Which is actually a very good thing. Nothing in "The Dog Stars" will remind you of "The Stand".

[pscot]

5. I started it last night

Last edited Tue Mar 19, 2013, 11:44 AM - Edit history (1)

This is definitely a good one. I'm having some trouble accepting the kill or be killed ethos, which is presented as a given. The narrator reminds me of the narrator of The Burrow, Kafka's fable of paranoid delusion. I really like the narrator's "voice", which is a modified stream consciousness, but not everyone will.

[SheilaT]

6. That kill or be killed ethos is

far too common, in my personal opinion. At the risk of re-igniting gender wars, it's a very masculine thing. There's an s-f story from a long time ago, probably the 1950's, in which a human manned spacecraft off in some other part of this galaxy makes First Contact with an alien species, and the underlying presumption with the humans is kill or be killed. We never really get to see the aliens and how they think, but to the humans it is utterly impossible that the aliens aren't thinking the same way.

Our war-making predilections may well be the end of us. Look at the insistence at high levels of government that our military be equipped to be able to fight two or three major wars at once, to the total exclusion of consideration of other ways to spend our money.

Also, many otherwise good science-fiction movies have that same theme. "Independence Day", "War of the Worlds", and so on. We are all guilty on a personal level of thinking that others will behave or think as we do, and when our primary thinking is aggressive, I see no good end.

[SalviaBlue]

7. I just finished.

I really liked this book. I like the genre and I am a sucker for a story with a dog character.

One thing kind of weird happened: This is maybe the 4th or 5th book I have read on my Kindle and I wasn't paying attention to where I was in the story and it abruptly ended. I was kind of disoriented because I wasn't expecting the story to wrap up when it did. If I had the physical book, I would have expected an ending since I would have been running out of pages.

After thinking about for awhile, it was a good ending, it just sneeked up on me.

[fadedrose]

8. I plant SalviaRed every year

Hummingbirds adore it..It's hard to find the tall, so I planted them from seed for several years, but it's too much trouble for me now. Hope I can find some.

Had blue salvias that I bought, and the hummers went to them too, but with less enthusiasm...

Good nick though...

[SalviaBlue]

9. I do love Salvia

of all colors!