The Dog Stars (Vintage Contemporaries)
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Traumatized, desperate, and bereaved after the downfall of the world as he knew it, Hig doesn’t have much to live for, except for a few things he would go all-out to protect. Only identified by this mononym, he not only survives the unnamed pandemic that turned the world into its ruinous state but Hig may have also found love.
As in Jean Hegland’s Into the Forest, the calamity that caused the apocalypse is not mentioned explicitly. The only thing we can infer is that it involved a highly contagious and virulent disease called “the blood”, which has wipes almost 99 percent of the US population and morphed the remaining survivors into grim, rape-happy, and murderous gangs. As you’d expect from one of the best post-apocalyptic novels, these gangs are vehemently protective of their limited resources and territory.
You’d be forgiven for thinking Hig, the protagonist and first-person narrator of Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars is happy living in post-apocalyptic Colorado. He must indeed fend off the blood-thirsty and highly territorial gangs who roam the calamity-struck wasteland. Sure, he must protect his dog Jasper and Bangley, his gun-toting roommate. Other than that, Hig is a pretty content guy.
He has unfettered access to lakes teeming with fish, his happy-go-lucky dog for unconditional companionship, an intact Cessna, and the stunning views and scenery of what’s Colorado to keep his soul happy. And with love in the offing, Hig sure has plenty to be thankful for – after all, what more could a free man ask for?
Even so, something still feels off with his life on an empty airplane hangar. While flying his 1956 Cessna into the winds, he receives a sudden radio transmission, sending him into a state of nostalgia. He couldn’t help but dream of a better life, something akin to life before fate robbed him of his pregnant wife, Melissa. Hig decides to embark on a one-way flying expedition to find the source of the strange radio transmission, a journey that will lead him to an imminent confrontation with both grace and despair.
Along the way, he comes across Cima, a mysterious lady with violet eyes, and confronts a duo of elderly serial murderers. Will fate bring him closer to what he has been longing for? What’s ahead for Hig is not only scary but also more life-affirming and more magical than he could have ever fathomed. It’s a journey into the unknown, an adventurous sojourn that makes The Dogs Stars one of the best books to read right now.
Heller’s The Dogs Stars has over the years been compared to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road – and it’s easy to see why. Both authors have complete control of their stories, not to forget that their works involve a grueling journey of a man looking for a shred of the golden past. Heller’s novel, while sad and brutal like The Road, it’s hopeful, moving, and life-reaffirming.
The Dog Stars, in many respects, is an exquisitely-narrated post-apocalyptic story of emotional resilience and survival in a new, strange world. There are two distinct aspects of the tale. In the first part, the author creatively and compellingly creates a bleak world largely ravaged by an apocalypse – a world full of despair, violence, rape, betrayal … the whole shebang of a post-apocalyptic society.
On the flip side, Heller uses his efficient, fast-paced writing to help hold out some hope that a sense of belonging and human resilience can be redeemed. It’s this speck of hope, human redemption, and resilience that helps build rapport with the reader. Add the fact that Heller writes with brutal honesty, and you’ve got one of the best science fiction novels that will entertain readers for many generations to come.
The literary world is in the golden age of doomsday fiction, and Heller’s The Dogs Stars has already made a mark in this movement. For those who love The Walking Dead, The Passage, Melancholia, or The Road, you will feel right at home reading this masterpiece. The title has been written so efficiently, so powerful, and so polished that every bit of it is reasonably believable.
Overall, this book unfolds with the robustness and swift pace of a movie it will unquestionably be adapted into. That’s primarily thanks to Heller’s elegant writing, the action-packed scenes dotted throughout the tale, the tender love story, gruesome villains, and the soulful protagonist. All in all, it unfolds as a funny, engrossing, poetic, and dark post-apocalyptic novel.
