King of Dogs: Life is the training ground for death.

by Andrew Edwards

As a Soviet-style collapse unfolds in America, Grayson, equal parts philosopher and warrior but legitimately neither, makes a death-bed promise to watch over a couple with a child on the way. Driven by his own severe loss, he must make good on his promise, and carry the psychic consequences as he races headlong into the fallout of our imploding civilization. Set in the hallucinatory desert southwest, populated with hunter-killer teams, awash with refugees, third-country mercenaries, and hostile, conspiring elites, King of Dogs pits the beauty of language and western philosophical ideals against the deep depravity and violent decay of our times.Balancing elements of the apocalyptic, epic and crime sub-genres with more ambitious, literary sentence-to-sentence writing and substructure, King of Dogs will appeal to readers who enjoy the aesthetics of Cormac McCarthy, as well as those who appreciate the challenge and reward found in writers as diverse as Joseph Conrad, Charles Bowden, and David Milch. Andrew Edwards was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. He currently lives in Montana with his girlfriend and dog. In addition to writing novels, short non-fiction and stories, he has worked as a survival instructor, ranch hand, tradesman, and professional driver. David Milch (DEADWOOD, LUCK), has called Edwards' fiction "excellent," and Lauren Groff (FLORIDA, ARCADIA) has said he is a "clear and wonderful talent." You can follow Andrew's ongoing projects, written and other at goldengoatguild.net.

Genres: Fiction, Novels

324 pages, Paperback

Published November 27, 2019

Reviews

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

At once a Spenglerian imagining of an America in the throes of dismemberment and a meditation on perennial masculinity, King of Dogs deserves a much wider readership. The novel explores how the art of tracking reveals the hermetic bonds shared between physical and psychical landscapes. It is also a novel about covenants. How their breaking leads to atomisation, both societally and individually. How their keeping sustains the divine yet fragile order of things. Thus, the canine–both natural tracker and unquestioningly loyal–becomes a totemic embodiment for the work’s most inspired themes.

Grayson, the protagonist, is a contemplative survivalist–half Hugh Glass half Boethius. To fulfil an oath made to a dead friend, he must traverse a desolate landscape prowled by African mercenaries, bloodthirsty vagrants and ever-present surveillance drones. In his quest, Grayson confronts betrayal, hallucinogenic poisons, the burdens of compassion, as well as his own tortured conscience.

The nebulous, globalising forces steamrolling the American southwest treat Grayson as both scapegoat and sacred adversary. Readers familiar with survival films like Wilde’s The Naked Prey, Pollack’s Jeremiah Johnson and Gibson’s Apocalypto, will find familiar tropes in King of Dogs. However, these tropes are infused with the kind of introspective, sensitive qualities found more readily in Terrence Malick’s pictures. Moments of brutality are juxtaposed with the beauty of the wilderness and the inscrutable wisdom of birds, beasts and insects. Readers from dissident communities will doubtless find in Grayson the kind of ‘coming man’ worth emulating, though he is by no means an Übermensch. Good and evil are very much distinct in his outlook.

The novel is strongest when it waxes philosophical. Poetic descriptions of the desert culminate in koan-like observations (is God hunting man just as desperately as man is hunting God?). Purusha and prakriti are given equal weight. Orthodox and pantheistic revelations jostle with each other. Edwards manages to avoid being trite in almost every instance, and his command of language is formidable. For example:

“Past the river running green and fast, the cut gorge wall glowed pink and white where the minerals were banded, and past the wall an arcade of stars waited up there, bright and cold. Or they were already dead and what men saw in the iterant blinking was not the wait of starlight but its homecoming. Who could know?”

Unfortunately, the novel is also weakest when philosophical and poetic. Descriptions of actions and the landscape are often overly granular, bogging down the plot. Grayson’s language is too often tainted with the same verbiage as the narration, making him less believable as a character and more akin to a figure in a Socratic dialogue. At times, Edwards also relies too heavily on the conventions of Cormac McCarthy, giving the novel the whiff of parody.

Shortcomings aside, Edwards has achieved something quite remarkable with King of Dogs. It is a moving, thrilling and eerily believable novel that seldom leans on the clichés of the post-apocalyptic genre. Its occasional verbosity is made up for by its rich metaphors and laconic insights (particularly at the climax). There is fare for the spiritualist, stoic, poet and prepper on every page. If you want to experience waldeinsamkeit while getting an inkling of what faculties must be honed to weather the collapse of nations, King of Dogs is indispensable.

[Chris Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book blew away my expectations. It is a catharsis, an inspiration, and a warning for those of us conscious of the malaise of modernity, cultural and spiritual decline, oligarchic greed, and of the slow collapse that is happening around us. If you know what I'm talking about, this is a book you really ought to read.
The story kept me hooked, undermined my expectations at every turn, and left me pondering its manifold meanings and implications long after I had finished it. The "vibe" (for lack of a better term) reminded me very much of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. The crisscrossing flow between the introspective philosophical and spiritual ponderings of the main character, the stark descriptions of the brutally violent reality around him, and the colorful impression of the timeless and alien Utah desert that serves not just as the setting, but as almost a major character within the book itself.
Again, this book blew away my expectations and ranks very highly amongst all the novels I've ever read. Please go pick it up and read it. Also, the Audible version is narrated by the author himself, and is excellent.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sci-fi post apocalypse story which is reasonably accurate and realistic (progressive economic collapse, decentralization, ambiguous crime vs. government actors), with somewhat realistic characters (they learn as they go; not starting out as some kind of JSOC super-soldier who just happens to be in the right place at the right time). Some of the philosophical parts seemed a bit forced, but overall a pretty good story, and I'm a fan of any realistic post-apocalyptic scenario.

[Tomasz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Storywise, plotwise, this would be at least a solid four, but - so help me - the author did his level best to bury the goods under the prose overwrought almost into ridiculousness. The scenario presented seems plausible-ish, both the plots of the rulers and the situation on the ground, up to and including the preppers and their obsession with specie. So, enter at your own risk, Moab, Utah, is about to go up in flames.

[Chris Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A man of words

If Gabriel García Márquez wrote doomer porn, it would be this book. Beautifully written, it held my attention from beginning to end.

[Tony Hinde · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF 55%

The author narrated this novel himself... badly. How can you write purple prose only to read it like a monotone metronome? He mispronounced so many words I couldn't fathom how it was possible.

For me, the well is poisoned, but if you haven't tried to read this book yet then avoid the audio version.

[Adam Vine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brutal and hypnotic.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

When Americans think of apocalyptic futures, we usually think of the apocalypse itself, whatever that might be. We have a morbid fascination with its totalizing effect, whether asteroid strike, zombie plague or nuclear war. The truth is, however, that the worse the situation in which a man finds himself, the less he cares about the big picture, the grand sweep of things. His focus becomes narrow, granular, centered on overcoming immediate challenges and satisfying immediate needs, within his own moral framework. This reality is portrayed well in King of Dogs, a novel of the near future, set in and around Moab, Utah in a disintegrating United States.

The year is unspecified, but it is not far off. America has become Brazil-ified, only worse, with much of the population immiserated while a small elite lives in armed enclaves. Central government control has largely evaporated, in the usual pattern of collapsing empires, where the center is simply ignored by the periphery. Instead, shadowy oligarchs, whose actions retain a veneer of governmental authority, pillage the nation, even more openly than today, including through the use of private armies. The result is “uncertainty, social disintegration, and low-intensity guerilla war,” driven by cartels, migration, elite factional fighting, and ever-more-desperate attempts at value extraction by the powerful trying to maintain their position. There is no complete collapse, just every day everything is a little worse than the day before. Propaganda, naturally, is still ubiquitous and “the old patriotic platitudes regarding democracy, opportunity and individual freedom wore on in every media.” The homeless and drifters are everywhere encamped; goods are hard to come by; personal security for the average person is fragile. In other words, this is a recognizable version of tomorrow, not so very different from today. You can see it from where you sit, chilling with Netflix, if you squint and look to windward.

To be sure, there are many possible futures for America, and this is only one. King of Dogs, while compelling, is a bleak book with a dim view of human nature, pessimistic about future America. If I were a betting man, I would bet that the future for America, or rather for the peoples who have long lived in the lands now known as America, is bright, even though there are very rocky times immediately ahead. The key question for America, I think, is whether and when there will be open conflict between Americans. In King of Dogs, there aren’t really warring ideological sides, and political divisions, of the sort on which we focus nowadays as the Left ramps up its plans for massive violence if their acquisition of yet more power is frustrated, do not appear. There is no civil war; rather, the violence is portrayed as much more like, say, the recent Congolese wars, where extraction drives conflict among factions. What is depicted is, in fact, a kinetic variation of what the Regime does right now—force its will upon a mostly passive and disorganized population.

The protagonist (it is hard to call him a hero, exactly) is one Grayson, a man left without an overriding purpose after his infant son died and his wife left him. In his story, there is far more duty than redemption, though no nihilism at all. Grayson journeys to Moab at the request of his dead mentor, a military man who taught him a great deal about surviving in environments made hostile by other men or by the elements (though Grayson himself has never been a soldier). In Moab lives his dead mentor’s brother and his pregnant wife, whom Grayson has been asked to shield from danger. The entire book, more or less, is his efforts to do so, and to take the brother and his family back to Oregon, after the child is born.

The problem for the people of Moab is that despite its isolation, the town controls the water supply of points south (the Colorado River runs through it). This leads to a full-scale assault by oligarch-hired mercenaries to take control of the town, presumably to use the water for gain, though the specifics are never laid out. “Full-scale” here means indistinguishable from a modern, well-equipped army, complete with some air power and most other assets of war (although, since this book was published in 2019, drones only make a small appearance; the military world has changed a lot in five years, as we see from the Russo-Ukraine War).

The assault is tightly-planned and executed, and includes as its first act destruction of local militias and Indian tribes identified as a threat, together with targeted attacks against any individual seen as a potential threat to the new overlords, who have done their research for several months. The goal is not to destroy the town, but to control it. No doubt much of this is standard operating procedure, and would be recognizable, to some degree, to an American veteran of our Middle Eastern wars. (I don’t know if the author, Andrew Edwards, has a military background, but it would not be surprising.) Throughout, the descriptions of events, and even more the exquisitely-rendered descriptions of landscapes, are slightly hallucinogenic, lending the book a unique, yet still readable, feel.

Grayson’s goal is to find and extricate his charges, but he runs afoul of the mercenaries. His challenge is that in the months while he was living in Moab, waiting for the child to be born, he was chosen by the mercenaries, or by their civilian bosses, as the “scapegoat”—the man whom they intend to frame, in the popular media which the oligarchs, then as now, control, as the “dangerous insurgent leader” who led a terrorist attack on Moab, such that “extrajudicial forces were required to quell the unrest.” What results is a variation on the classic short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” where Grayson is hunted, in one extended passage quite literally.

The protagonist’s challenge is exacerbated by his finding it is impossible to trust anyone. (Spoilers ahead.) By the end of the book, he has killed nearly everyone with whom he had dealings, all of whom betrayed him. All those with whom he interacts are very bad people—not just cowardly and treacherous, but often involved in various forms of degraded perversion. I think this is an overly negative view of people, but who is to say how our society would behave in a chaotic future, given that Americans in America have never been tested, at least not for 150 years? Worse, the man, woman, and child for whom he did and risked all this are also dead, long dead, killed by the mercenaries, though he had not realized it. (I said this was a bleak book.)

Why does Grayson do all this, at extreme risk and cost? Simply because he promised. “A promise is a type of challenge to the darkness of the world. A promise is a source of light that burns in eternity if made good while those broken are inverted, swallowed in the expanding nothingness.” This, the culture and way of honor and duty, is a very ancient way of looking at the world, one that seems absent from our present age. But, again in wagering mode, I bet it will make a return.

While there is plenty of action, King of Dogs is more a book of introspection than anything else. Grayson spends a lot of time pondering, in essence, the meaning of his existence. The book is therefore prone to frequent philosophical asides, which sounds like it would be annoying, but it’s not. A subtle thread of particular interest to me is that of Eastern Orthodoxy. The protagonist is Orthodox, though it is never announced or discussed. It merely shows through in little passages that his faith is important to him. When his mentor is dying of cancer, “Grayson dragged him to the Russian Orthodox church with its blue and gold onion domes, where the women were more beautiful for the scarves over their hair and where the theology had no holes.” And when his mentor is dead, the hospital priest says, “Saint Maximus taught that those who refuse to face their suffering know not what benefit it brings for the next world. This will not be a problem for you, I suspect.”

Sometimes, Grayson focuses with the Jesus Prayer, especially when tempted to do, or about to do, something that might get him sideways with Christ—which is often. When he does such things, although all could be accurately cast as meting out justice, he “prays that God approves,” though he realizes He very well may not. “To kill is a sin, yes. And atonement followed by repentance is the true way to face the inevitability of your sins.” “And as to the question of whether I’ll be granted the requisite time to properly atone for killing you or anyone else that I’m going to kill—that’s a judicial, divine grey area which while gravely serious is ultimately one of acceptable risk.” Grayson’s view is that “God would forgive if he was wrong. While if he was right, perhaps then God would have mercy.”

I’m not sure if his approach is the right one. Many of the modern Orthodox hierarchy, in the same way as most present-day Christian denominations, have adopted a condemnatory view of justice-based killing, even though much of what they criticize, namely killing by the state or by individuals in broadly-viewed self-defense, was formerly viewed by the Orthodox as permissible. The modern view is ahistorical and does not, I suspect, conform to the views of the Fathers of the Church (to whom they never refer when discussing the matter, suggesting either that they fear contradiction or that the Fathers said nothing about such killing because it was self-evidently not a major concern).

Grayson says to one man, “By avoiding mercy—that is, by showing none—you have chosen justice.” (He says to another, “You are about to come squarely before your failings as a human man, and they will unfold through infinity like mirrors upon mirrors. There’s no bottom to it and it’s too late to ask for a guide.” Ouch.) Killing others is far from the worst sin a man can commit, and may be required by duty, to both God and man, though it should never be celebrated. Traditional Orthodox practice was to require soldiers returning from war to confess and perform penance, not because what they had done was necessarily the wrong choice, but in order to recognize that any killing, even necessary killing, is falling short of the ideal mark God desires. It is no doubt relevant, as well, that God would not allow King David, one of Israel’s greatest prophets and a saint in all Christian traditions, to build the Temple. “Thou hast shed blood abundantly, and hast made great wars: thou shalt not build an house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth in my sight.” But we will come back to these theological questions another day, perhaps.

So what does King of Dogs tell us about our actual future? As I have discussed before, my theory is that if America slides into fragmentation (a safe, but not sure, prediction), the inevitable local organizing device is the Armed Patronage Network, groups designed for defense and, more importantly, to create and administer social order. The curveball that Edwards throws is the presence of foreigners, something I have never really considered. In the scenario here, it is not migrants as such that are the major problem, although obviously the massive migrant invasion currently being imposed on the United States by the Regime is enormously destructive of trust as well as very dangerous to Americans in any social or political disintegration, and complicates the activities of any potential APN. Rather, it is organized military hirelings imported from abroad to serve the interests of the Regime. Mercenaries, of course, are as old as civilization, and as the Russo-Ukraine War has shown, there are always many thousands of men willing to, or even eager to, fight for money. My belief is that the American military would not fight in any meaningful way for the Regime against the American people—but that assumption does not apply to mercenaries, especially if those mercenaries are hired not precisely by the government, but by tentacles of the Regime acting primarily in their private interest.

This would put America into a very bad situation. All civil wars are dreadful, something too many have forgotten, even with recent examples such as the 1990s Balkan Wars. Although violence is sometimes necessary, it is a terrible thing to break the world; it is almost as terrible to live through the breaking of the world. Even, or especially, splintered low-level violence is extremely unpleasant for normal people, especially because it can continue for a very long time. As one of the characters says, “It’s as if we went to sleep in Utah and woke up in Gaza or Yemen or some unholy thing.” (And this was written before the current destruction of Gaza, and the aborning American defeat in Yemen.) The only solution to this type of chaotic fracture is the rise from within, or the imposition from without, of some greater power, combined with, naturally, the physical separation of the warring parties.

I doubt that what is shown here is America’s future. I don’t think that America could reach the point of seizures of entire towns by mercenaries without having long since Balkanized into overtly warring factions. The author places heavy emphasis on “international, untouchable” organizations, but inserting those into America in the ways depicted here is far from a sure thing. Yet, if the Regime’s crimes and sins do lead to the fragmentation of America, one can imagine freelance foreigners coming to pick over the bones, unless they were stopped by organized force. It is easy to surmise that a fractured America would attract limitless opportunists; there is a lot still here for the taking. It would become like much of Africa, a hellhole. In this book, one of the mercenaries, noting his long service in little wars across the globe, is explicit about his motivation in coming to Moab. “But in this case the mighty western man and his Empire have fallen. I am given an opportunity to clean up, to take my piece, so I do.”

What can we do about this potential problem? I am not sure, other than to organize and arm while the days grow shorter. In the book, there exist local militias with more organization than the types of militias we have today in America (which, sadly, seem mostly to not be very competent), but they are depicted as easily defeated. Maybe this is true, maybe it is not. I suspect it is less true than as shown here; witness the difficulties the American military had in Iraq, and even more so in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, individual APNs would have significant challenges in this situation; they are unlikely to work well in conditions of organized outside military pressure. On the other hand, APNs are a bridging device, a transition state, to the restoration of a more centralized authority in conditions of societal fracture; opponents such as mercenaries would likely merely hasten this situation.

More generally, of late we frequently, from both Left and Right, see suggestions that we all feel something bad is coming. (The about-to-be-released movie Civil War, depicting exactly what its title says, feeds into this, certainly.) I am unsure if this is meaningful; I suspect this is more a manifestation of America having become, with very good reason, a low-trust society than it is actual insight into the future. Some forget that this feeling of doom was not uncommon in the late 1980s, when I first came of political age (though then it was just the fear of nuclear war in an otherwise extremely optimistic time), and has intermittently appeared since 2008 or so, after the optimism of the 1990s and early 2000s died. Certainly, I’m sure bad things are coming, because history shows that the American project is heading into massive turbulence. I just don’t think precisely when and what can be predicted with any degree of accuracy. We merely have to prepare and wait.

Americans are very, very used to thinking that the bad things which happen in most of the rest of the world, or in the uncivilized parts, can’t happen here. Suggestions and evidence to the contrary are viscerally shocking, even to the well-informed. To me, for example, it is very weird to think that there are bombs dropping in Lvov, which I visited thirty years ago, a quiet city filled with Habsburg architecture. But there is no end of history, and history is mostly bad things happening. The living creature known as civilization, and even more that creature known as Western civilization, has ultimately proved fragile. What we do with that knowledge, we will see.

[K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

McCarthy-esque. This book is full of vigor and vitality. I really enjoyed this.

[Ben Andrus · Rating 5 out of 5]

After chapter 3, I couldn’t put it down. Bleak, but fascinating.

[Arthur Sido · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well that was terrible. Full disclosure, I gave up 1/3 of the way through the book. King of Dogs came recommended by a podcaster I respect but seriously dude, stick to history podcasts and avoid book recommendations.

Somewhere in KoD there is a story but danged if I could find it. Most of the book was overwrought attempts to paint a picture like he was getting paid for over the top scenery descriptions. It was easy to forget what the protagonist was supposed to be doing amidst the scene setting but even that wasn't as bad as the clumsy attempts at philosophy that was apparently supposed to reflect the internal dialogue of the main character, and I can't even recall his name at this point.

I could almost forgive that if the author didn't keep having the protagonist doing stupid crap. The guy is supposed to be a highly trained survival guy but early on we read:

"He crawled to the creek and filled his water bottle and drank."

Oh that makes sense, drinking unfiltered water from a creek. Something every trained outdoorsmen does. Later this rugged warrior finds himself armed only with a Remington 870, a pump shotgun which is OK for home defense, and outgunned by a couple of guys with AR-15s. He manages to kill one of the guys and take his rifle as well as 5 full magazines....which he then dumps in favor of his shotgun? WTF?

That set me off and I couldn't ignore the ridiculous internal dialogue afterwards so I abandoned KoD. A book like this should be in my wheelhouse but it was so silly that I couldn't even force myself to keep going. There are too many books that are much better in line to read to waste even another hour on King of Dogs.

[Ned · Rating 3 out of 5]

One minor spoiler ahead at the end. Read at your own risk.

I read this due to someone's recommendation that I follow online. I can't remember who now. I rarely read fiction since most of my reading is for research and education, so I am not the typical audience. In terms of the "prepper fiction" genre, I would round this up to 4 stars. If you're a fan of the genre, you will likely like it. It is fairly smart and violent, though I could definitely see people being irritated with its somewhat pedantic prose and exaggerated internal dialogue. Some will find it intellectually stimulating, others annoying. I didn't mind it.

Now for the minor spoiler. I find it noteworthy that some of the villains are human traffickers operating under cover of organized Christian charity. Christians have been played for suckers in recent decades, particularly with respect to pro-life organizations that ended up opposing laws that Christians wanted passed to protect the unborn. A real betrayal. There seems to be a similar dynamic at work with respect to human trafficking and "protecting" young girls from sexual abuse that is just coming to light in real time. Bearing in mind that this book was published in 2019, there is some prescience here. Be very carful who you align with and trust on this issue or you might just wind up being on the side of the abusers. Be wise as serpents.

[Connor Pritchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy hell. Inject this savage poetry right into my action loving veins. It’s kinda like The Road meets Rambo, but it’s also jam packed with rugged wisdom on spirituality, masculinity and the natural world. I was a little confused (in a good way) during the ramp into the story but once you get about halfway through, the author hits you with a combo punch of context, stakes and non stop action. Not only will I read everything this author puts out, but Grayson (the main character) also helped me become a better father. I had been internally griping about never having any time to myself, but as Grayson says, “Every day is just training for the next and all that matters is the mission.” This book is criminally underrated and I will be cheering for this author to find the readership he deserves.

[Daniel Youker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wasn’t really what I thought it was going to be. The description of a Soviet-style collapse in the US made me hope for a more political drama that explained the actual process of destabilization, which I thought would be timely. Instead it reads like a wanna-be Cormac McCarthy novel, which is too harsh, but accurate absent a better term. Dark story with ambiguous resolution and some soaring prose that sometimes feels out of place or trying too hard. The title is odd to me, it certainly sounds good, and the subtitle matches themes that occur frequently, and the character certainly has a strong affinity for dogs, but I guess “King of Dogs” doesn’t make much sense to me all said and done. Happy this guy is writing though, I might give Crowbar a shot later.

[Dale Lipan · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are not many "new" novels released that spur me to revisit time and again. With that said, I have absorbed King of Dogs 3 times. Edwards weaves an intricate tapestry of creation and destruction, discovery and loss. The setting is rich and easy to submerge oneself. Characters are balanced. The plot and execution of the tale are soaked with McCarthian influence. This is a great novel and I look forward to whatever work comes next.

The author also has a podcast, The Warhorse, that is worth checking out.

[Riley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book left much to be desired in terms of character development, the motives of nearly everyone involved in the the story, and what situations lead to the current societal collapse etc but the lack of those things also added to the bleakness and chaos and uncertainty. The pacing is nonstop and it’s very bleak the whole time. It seems like this could become some version of reality if/when the Globo-Homo American Empire (GAE) collapses.

[Kyle Grindberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read a number of competent-man-survives-post-apocalyptic-situation books and this one takes the cake for being the strangest, they're all inherently right wing, which this one certainly is, but this one has so much interesting contemplation and strange many hallucinogenic moments. Very interesting how the idea of covenants plays such a central role to the story.

[Bill Ledebuhr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible profile of what the world, and specifically the US, is headed towards if our current trajectory holds. A story of survival, ethics, terror and truth. I was gripped the last 150 pages and could not stop reading

[Chad Krause · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having several visceral physical moments and thoughtful mind dumps on the human condition, pages turn fast within KoD. Suffering from Cormac’s jarring use of non story driving descriptive words that only a few in certain niche professions would know–it’s a good but not ideal read.

[Patrick Heizer · Rating 4 out of 5]

B+

[Matt Haynes · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way of the samurai, American style.

[Austin H · Rating 5 out of 5]

phenomenal book.

Masterful weaving of human nature, theology, visceral revenge, philosophy, and survival. Like Cormac McCarthy reborn, set in a modern realpolitik .

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was fantastic. So refreshing to have a deeply introspective character in the midst of the competency porn genre. Loved it. Already recommending to people.

[Josh Pendergrass]

There are definitely parallels with Cormac McCarthy - a post apocalyptic survival story with philosophical language weaving its way in and out of the narrative. But while McCarthy's apocalyptic landscapes seem more remote, mystical even, the setting of King of Dogs is all the more terrifying in it's credibility and applicability to the world we live in now. It takes place in what I perceive to be a very conceivable not too distant future. The Federal Government has essentially collapsed and groups of contractors and armed militias come in to take private control of any available resources (water supplies, etc.). Meanwhile the public at large is kept largely unaware of what is happening through intensive propaganda blinding them to what is happening in their own society. People ignore the growing poverty and social collapse until it's too late and the militias have taken over their towns. Once the government breaks down the meanest and most violent actors rise to the surface to pillage and destroy.

The protagonist makes a promise to a dying friend to protect this friend's younger brother, wife, and new born child, but in the process of attempting to do this he is captured by one of the militias and what ensues is one of the most gripping and exciting chase scenes I've ever read. The novel does get quite violent and disturbing in parts.

Overall I did not find the philosophical digressions to be as strong as those in Cormac McCarthy's work, but there are some ideas that really did make me think and I believe are quite insightful. The most important being that when a society collapses, this collapse is completely intertwined with the moral and social values that that society chooses to encourage or discourage. The author here focuses on the values of Trust and Loyalty and their importance for a functioning society. The collapse in the novel is precipitated by a culture that no longer values loyalty between citizens and communities, even between neighbors and friends.

There were many other philosophical ideas that the author meditates on, some of which did not work as well for me. By the end of the novel the violence and vengeance got to be too much for me and the protagonists actions left my more Christian sensibilities uncomfortable, but with the evil that he is faced with it is difficult to judge. It could definitely be argued that the novel is too hyper-masculine, badass along the lines of a John Wick movie or something, and I think this would be a fair complaint, but overall I would definitely recommend it, it has left me with lots to think about.

[Landon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Absolutely astounding book that brutally plunged its fist into my chest to pull at my heart, showing no mercy in the process, something Grayson would, no doubt, do. I highly recommend this work for anyone looking to understand the issues with a de-Americanized America and feminized man, the only critique I give being that numerous spelling mistakes are present.

[Grace Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

High quality entertainment