A bio-engineered dog fights for its life and its right to life. From the Arthur C. Clark Award-winning author of CHILDREN OF TIME.My name is Rex. I am a good dog.Rex is also seven foot tall at the shoulder, bulletproof, bristling with heavy calibre weaponry and his voice resonates with subsonics especially designed to instil fear. With Dragon, Honey and Bees, he's part of a Multiform Assault Pack operating in the lawless anarchy of Campeche, Mexico. A genetically engineered Bioform, he's a deadly weapon in a dirty war. All he wants to be is a Good Dog. And to do that he must do exactly what Master says and Master says he's got to kill a lot of enemies.But who, exactly, are the enemies? What happens when Master is tried as a war criminal? What rights does the Geneva Convention grant weapons? Do Rex and his fellow Bioforms even have a right to exist?And what happens when Rex slips his leash? 'Detailed and clever worldbuilding... Tchaikovsky pulls off an impressive feat in making Rex's character evolution genuinely moving. Readers will be wowed' Publishers Weekly
I do agree with the criticism that the book lacks depth and reads as YA. It’s full of very interesting ideas and plots, but not explored in much detail. There’s a lot of smoothing and high-speed movement throughout. I’d definitely be interested in reading a fleshed-out version of this book with exactly the same plot, just with more sauce. I didn’t particularly like the end of the book, which consists of lots of short stories that progress time. There’s also this odd backdrop of everything being a theatre, which only led to disappointment for me because I had my own theories about what it meant, and they didn’t end up being true.