gilda_elise

My name's Griz. My childhood wasn't like yours. I've never had friends, and in my whole life I've not met enough people to play a game of football.

My parents told me how crowded the world used to be, but we were never lonely on our remote island. We had each other, and our dogs.

Then the thief came.

There may be no law left except what you make of it. But if you steal my dog, you can at least expect me to come after you.

Because if we aren't loyal to the things we love, what's the point?

The book is a book inside a book. Griz, locked in some sort of prison, writes in a journal how it all came to be, how he ended up where he is. It starts with the theft of his dog, Jess. Griz rushes after the thief, taking only his other dog, Jip; the story builds from there. Would I have rushed off, not waiting for any sort of help, to get my dog back? Probably. So it was easy to empathise with Griz.

It’s a book that really should be read nice and slow, so that you can pick up all the little nuances of Griz’s journey. Because what starts out as a very basic journey soon turns into an odyssey through a shattered landscape. There are very few people left, but there is still danger. And while much has been destroyed, much is still untouched.

I do have one tiny complaint; the author kept dropping hints as to what is going to happen (as Griz is writing this from the future.) I really wish he hadn’t done that. It made me want to skim through pages until I found out what happened, which sometimes wasn’t as bad as the reader is led to believe.

But this is a solid, well written novel. And though civilization has come to an end, there is still much to love, still reason for hope.