HAMMER OF THE DOGS, Blade Runner with teens in Las Vegas

HAMMER OF THE DOGS
JARRET KEENE
University of Nevada Press
$21.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A postapocalyptic adventure in Las Vegas for readers of all ages.

Set in the wasteland of post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, Hammer of the Dogs is a literary dystopian adventure filled with high-octane fun starring twenty-one-year-old Lash. With her high-tech skill set and warrior mentality, Lash is a master of her own fate as she helps to shield the Las Vegas valley’s survivors and protect her younger classmates at a paramilitary school holed up in Luxor on the Las Vegas Strip. After graduation, she’ll be alone in fending off the deadly intentions and desires of the school’s most powerful opponents.

When she’s captured by the enemy warlord, she’s surprised by two He’s not the monster her headmaster wants her to believe and the one thing she can’t safeguard is her own heart. Hammer of the Dogs celebrates the courageousness of a younger generation in the face of authority while exploring the difficult choices a conscionable young woman must make with her back against a blood-spattered wall. It’s a story of transformation and maturity, as Lash grapples with her own identity and redefines the glittering Las Vegas that Nevada is known for.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, and the evils threatening to destroy the little bit of the world live in a hotel on the Strip....we sure this is fiction...?

It is indeed fiction, staring Lash, a young woman whose horrific life mid-apocalypse has left her, like so many others, with disfiguring bone-deep scars psychic and emotional. She and her scoobygroup need little enough to exist but even that is hard to come by in her Las Vegas.

Fights, squabbles, battles, all are normal in this hellscape...much like what we're told the world of the twenty-first century is in the US...and, as this book points up, it very much is not. This world is the fever dream of the seditious MAGAts.

It's also a rip-snortin' action-packed good time read, a great use of one's bits and patches of moments between things to enjoy and absorb this book. It isn't subtle, and it isn't pretentious. Give it to your teen grandson or nephew to woo him away from the console for that all-important family bonding time. (Of course, I'm assuming the family is like my own and reads together for fun.)

There's a map to satify the three-d screenhead. There's non-stop action. There's an impressive economy of verbiage that still evokes a strongly sensory world. There are betrayals and unexpected alliances. None of it has a word wasted. All of it makes up a beautifully constructed story.

I wouldn't give it to my granddaughter with the borning sense of women's oppression and the weight of the male gaze. Might not hand it to the boy who's into the awful J6 stuff. The gamer is going to be won over by its resemblance (evident to my eyes at least) to generations of videogames in storyline, plot, and action.

I don't intend this as a dismissal! It is, in its intent, an acknowledgement of the author's hard work to give the legions of gamers a reason to branch out into text-based storytelling. It is meant for them, and here I was flipping pages to see what happened next. That is one successful job, and a big round of kudos to the author.

Works well for its intended audience, and will make a successful gift for them.