Title: An intriguing premise leads to disappointment
Product review: I bought this book after I heard it described on NPR; I thought any first novel with a title that good was worth a look. Unfortunately, the execution fails to live up to the premise. The writing is often thin, as in the frequent fictional excerpts from newspapers and magazine or journal entries in which the author's tentative voice never adapts to the tone of the purported source. The plot, which proceeds briskly, never really goes anywhere -- there are hints of sinister secrets that are simply left hanging, foreshadowing of malevolent intentions that either never surface or are frustrated too easily. The novel ends up feeling like a story that gets by on an eye-catching premise and nothing more.As a footnote, the premise never really adds up anyway. Why would anyone think that walking, talking, intelligent dogs would be the perfect super-soldier? Why not robots? Or gorillas? Or chimpanzees? Or, or, or... robots?
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