Fiefdom

By: Dan Abnett, Nik Vincent

Narrated by: Charlie Sanderson

Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

"Gene the Hackman, top dog, him done the great Walk Around. Not for him the darkness, not for him the Time of Ice that we know today."

Evelyn War is a Believer. She knows that in the Old Time, long before the Time of Ice, the Masters fought a war with Them, great chitinous beasts that stalked the world and rended and killed. She knows the Masters sent fierce, doglike Aux like her to watch over their great sleep and to keep Them off their lawn. She knows the stories are not just lessons in the ways of war. Them were real.

But in the frozen ruins of Berlin, Them have not been seen for many years. Now the Aux fight among themselves and say all that was just stories. They scorn Evelyn and mock her warnings. But the ice is melting, and the whistling calls of Them can be heard in the tunnels of the U-Bahn once more....

©2014 Rebellion (P)2018 Recorded Books

Watership Down meets Mad Max meets Alien

I liked this more than I expected.

The characters are a different species, but are relatable. They may as well be humans because their behavior is well within the human range. They are stock character types, like the leader, the visionary, the smart kid, the outsider, but that's fine. The band of heroes goes on a quest and then there is a showdown. Along the way, they learn how to fight the big threat but it is never without cost. Usually, in stories like this the heroes find a silver bullet that wins the battle easily. That doesn't happen in this book. The terror and above all the chaos of combat is portrayed here as well as I've ever read it. Even when there is a good plan, things go horribly wrong and people die. The nature of the characters and their experiences means that it takes time for them to learn new things, and they don't magically figure out how to fight in a new way overnight. As a result, many die. I liked that a lot. Battle is chaos, and deadly.

The characters have a particular way of speaking that reminded me of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome for some reason. It didn't annoy me, and it made sense once I got used to it. I don't know if it's German grammar or something the author made up. Also, the character names are never explained. I assumed that they are ancestral from the original dogs. Some are corrupted,("Oscar-so-Wild") which is a nice touch.

I liked the dog storyteller and his tales, which reminded me of Dandelion from Watership Down telling the mythology of the rabbits. It was a good way to explain the backstory of the setting. It's not difficult to understand what happened in the past, but it doesn't tell everything.

Things I didn't like:
The survival of certain artifacts from centuries before was difficult to believe. I did not understand why they would not have been used up long ago in internecine fighting. There is a lack of an industrial base to support the technology that the characters use.

The writing is effective and kept my attention. Good narration as well, although I still don't know what the dogs are called. "Orcs?" Oryxs? Can't tell.