REVIEW: Dogs of War (book) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Dogs of War is science fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Rex is a massive humanoid dog Bioform, a cybernetically and genetically enhanced being created to be a military weapon. He's deadly enough on his own but is also packed with weaponry, and his voice is designed to instill fear. He's the leader of a group of Bioforms that include an enhanced bear named Honey, an enhanced reptile named Dragon, and a hivemind composed of enhanced bees called Bees. All he wants is to be a Good Dog, but what does that mean? 

His whole life, being a Good Dog has meant doing what Master tells him to do. Master tells him who the enemy is, and then Rex and his team kills the enemy. Things become more complicated, however, when Rex and his team's connection to Master gets broken off and Rex is left to decide on his own who is and isn't the enemy and what actions he needs to take to be a Good Dog.

This was my second book by Tchaikovsky. My first was Service Model, which I initially liked but which, overall, turned out to be a disappointment. Thankfully, Dogs of War ended up working much better for me.

Was it because of the narrator? I'm not sure. I'm a softie when it comes to animals in books, and even though Rex wasn't exactly a dog in the usual sense, the sections from his POV believably read like something a giant humanoid dog might think. I was primed to like Rex from the start, but I think the moment he really won me over was when he asked Hartnell if he could be given a nice voice (i.e. not gut-level terrifying). My heart melted.

A large chunk of the book dealt with the question of whether the Bioforms were simply weapons to be decommissioned or beings with their own rights. If the latter was the case, then what place could/should they have in the world and among humans? Rex essentially ended up becoming the spokesperson for all Bioforms while humans tried to figure out what to do next. I really wished, multiple times, that Rex's lawyer had someone on his team with experience in Bioform engineering/creation, because it felt like everybody was working blind. That trial scene was awful.

Rex's Master was a horrible monster of a person who did terrible things...and who, eventually, got what he deserved to a degree I wasn't expecting. It felt almost fan-servicey how much Tchaikovsky stomped on him. This isn't a complaint. Thumbs up to Tchaikovsky, although I wanted to hug Rex while he dealt with his complicated feelings about it all.

All in all, I really enjoyed this and plan to continue on with this series (trilogy?). I'm curious to see whether a book starring a different Bioform will work as well for me.