Brainycat's Occaisonal Reviews

Brainycat's 5 "B"s:
blood: 2
boobs: 0
bombs: 0
bondage: 0
blasphemy: 2
Stars: 3.5
Bechdel Test: PASS
Deggan's Rule: FAIL
Gay Bechdel Test: FAIL

Please note: I don't review to provide synopses, I review to share a purely visceral reaction to books and perhaps answer some of the questions I ask when I'm contemplating investing time and money into a book.

A servicable but not especially engaging story that takes full advantage of the most popular cryptozoological tropes. Red shining eyes in the night, strange teeth, domestic animals acting strangely - they're all packed in here. The featured domestic animals are cats, and since I'm a certified crazy cat guy, this endeared me to the story even though the character building of both the cats and humans vacillated between inadequate and forced. The plot developed steadily enough, but is left entirely unresolved and the human protagonist is left in an untenable position. This is the first installment of loosely related stories in his Wicked Neighborhood series, of which I also picked up #2 and #3. I doubt I'm going to read them. I'm probably being generous with 3.5 stars, but I really like cats so that's worth a star and a half to me.