ETNA, not what you think no matter what you think you're thinking

ETNA
PAUL YOON
Scribner (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Beloved author and winner of The Story Prize, Paul Yoon, is back with the unforgettable story of a working dog, Etna, who, after a devastating war, embarks on an odyssey in the hopes of returning home.

Set in a fictional country in the present day, this is a story told through the eyes of an ex-military dog, Etna. After surviving years of a devastating war, Etna decides one night to leave the men he has fought alongside for years and return home—to the place where he was taken from when he was young, in the thin but persistent hope that if a home exists for him, it might be there.

Thus begins an exhilarating odyssey told through the eyes of a dog as he traverses across ruined landscapes and fights to survive in a world that, even in peacetime, proves to be just as precarious. Along the way, he encounters other animals and humans who are attempting to figure out how to start again. What makes a life when there is no home to go back to? How do we begin to trust each other again after such profound loss?

This is a novel about the power of an idea, about never giving up, and ultimately a novel about finding hope in the most dire of times.

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

My Review: Etna...volcano...Sicily's demi-Vesuvius.

No, Etna is a bright, sweet-tempered puppy whose evident cleverness gets him selected to assist the American troops in their conduct of war. Set in his homeland as it's destroyed, a woman with a gift of speaking after a fashion to animals' minds identifies this lovely creature as a helper for human destroyers. Named after the volcano by an American soldier, Etna's trained to be a mine-sniffing dog. He renders aid and saves lives to the best of his ability...and he's good at his job...until the war around him shifts.

Etna's alert, oriented, and intelligent. He makes his own mind up to leave the soldiers he's served, served with really, to go home. It's part of the story's charm that by them we've accepted Etna as our narrator, as an entity with thoughts and feelings and interiority we can invest in. He perceives the damaged soldiers around him, senses as any dog would the way they've changed with a dog's emotional sensitivity to people. As Etna leaves the soldiers' world behind he heads to wherever his memory says is home through a landscape he does not recognize, peopled by scarred, violent survivors.

A large part of the decision to invest in Etna's journey comes as we-the-reader settle into Author Yoon's pared-down narrative voice, unornamented while remaining emotionally evocative and visually rich. It makes sense that it would be this combination of traits because dogs perceive the world at an angle to human perceptions, which must somehow be conveyed to human readers in a way that makes sense to them. Had, for example, Author Yoon chosen to convey Etna's perceptions through smells it would fall flat. Humans barely have a sense of smell. (I myownself think that's an adaptation so we can live in cities....)

As Etna lives through destruction by making his mind up to get home, he interacts with the other animals around him in ways that feel natural by the time we get there narratively. Author Yoon does not put thoughts of literally incredible complexity into animals' perceptions. That makes the fact they're animals go down easier, makes the observations and perceptions make sense in their context. A good touch of realistic world-building is how only one human is ever shown communicating with Etna in a magically clear way. Etna's other interactions with humans feel sharp, clear, but never direct and magically clear; it's how I see dogs and intelligent sensitive people interacting daily as my neighborhood has a good-sized canine population.

The story takes place mostly in the aftermath of war so there is a lot of devastation in Etna's homebound path. A lot changes in a creature that survives violence by committing violence. In Etna's case he doesn't attack others but he defends himself and those he serves by necessary means. It will disturb you as you read the story. It is never gratuitous or prolonged for effect. Using Etna for a PoV character allows Author Yoon to present violence and consequences realistically resonant on the emotional level without lingering in the trauma left behind. Etna rediscovers human lovingkindness when he meets Hong and his doctor/partner, determinedly helping their fellow countrymen recover from wounds and diseases they never needed to suffer but for war coming to their world from outside.

In the summer of 2026, defined in good part by Christopher Nolan's retelling of The Odyssey, Paul Yoon hit a cultural jackpot by reimagining a homegoing quest in a unique way. That he did so successfully will, I strongly hope, boost this tight, compact, deeply moving story of a dog who needs to rediscover his purpose after war to the sales heights it deserves.