Main POV character has his consciousness transferred into a puppy. Puppies put into a sack to drown, experienced from pup's viewpoint (most - maybe all - are rescued from the river); day-to-day misery of life among incomprehensible humans from a dog's viewpoint: sadness includes being unable to protect abused and exploited young human mistress (not sexual exploitation, though); from girl's viewpoint, her dog has died at end of story, although his consciousness actually goes back where it belongs; his realization that they can no longer be together, because now he is a frighteningly powerful superhuman being and not her dog.
You'll have to decide for yourself, smilla ... . It's a pretty good book.
Yeah, Morgaine - I found those pretty lame. They're early. I like her early SF (Hunter of Worlds for example) better. Downbelow Station was the first of the Company Wars books to be written, although it's not first in terms of internal chronology. It introduces Signy Mallory, jump-carrier captain, the first (IMO) of CJC's truly successful tough older female characters; she shows up as a minor character (rather like Vimes in Monstrous Regiment) in a couple of other books.
And plainly the Chanur books didn't make the same sort of impression on you that they did on me! For me, the scene in Chanur's Homecoming where Py and Jik (the mahe spyship captain - not Goldtooth, but his partner) have a tense heart-to-heart, and she says "I love you like kin, Mahe, but I'd shoot you with my own hand ... " if he posed a threat to her species, and a few moments later, he comes back with "I love you like kin. Same. Got to tell you, you going to bleed. Same you win, same you lose, " because they're going to have to make some hard, hard choices, both of them - argh, the angst, the hard-won cross-species friendship up against preservation of one's own species ... .
no subject
-MASSIVE- Spoilers for Dogsbody:
Main POV character has his consciousness transferred into a puppy. Puppies put into a sack to drown, experienced from pup's viewpoint (most - maybe all - are rescued from the river); day-to-day misery of life among incomprehensible humans from a dog's viewpoint: sadness includes being unable to protect abused and exploited young human mistress (not sexual exploitation, though); from girl's viewpoint, her dog has died at end of story, although his consciousness actually goes back where it belongs; his realization that they can no longer be together, because now he is a frighteningly powerful superhuman being and not her dog.
You'll have to decide for yourself, smilla ... . It's a pretty good book.
Yeah, Morgaine - I found those pretty lame. They're early. I like her early SF (Hunter of Worlds for example) better. Downbelow Station was the first of the Company Wars books to be written, although it's not first in terms of internal chronology. It introduces Signy Mallory, jump-carrier captain, the first (IMO) of CJC's truly successful tough older female characters; she shows up as a minor character (rather like Vimes in Monstrous Regiment) in a couple of other books.
And plainly the Chanur books didn't make the same sort of impression on you that they did on me! For me, the scene in Chanur's Homecoming where Py and Jik (the mahe spyship captain - not Goldtooth, but his partner) have a tense heart-to-heart, and she says "I love you like kin, Mahe, but I'd shoot you with my own hand ... " if he posed a threat to her species, and a few moments later, he comes back with "I love you like kin. Same. Got to tell you, you going to bleed. Same you win, same you lose, " because they're going to have to make some hard, hard choices, both of them - argh, the angst, the hard-won cross-species friendship up against preservation of one's own species ... .