Hello and welcome to this Track of Words Guest Review, in which the excellent Jude Reid (author of, among other things, the recent Black Library novel Creed: Ashes of Cadia) takes a look at Gundog by Gary Whitta – out now from Inkshares and also available in podcast form. I hadn’t come across this before, but I’m intrigued by the idea of a novel released as both a serialised podcast and a regular book – and it sounds fantastic! I’m delighted to feature Jude on the site, and hope you enjoy this guest review as much as I did.
Without further ado then, over to Jude
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In the near future, Earth has been conquered by a race of brutal alien machines known as the Mek, and an entire generation has grown up under their oppressive rule.
I’ve been a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories from an early age – I just can’t get enough of heroes picking their way through the ruins of the world that was, impeded by natural disasters, roving bands of raiders, government-backed attempts to restore stability at the cost of individual freedoms…and whatever caused the problem in the first place. So you can imagine my excitement when I came across Gundog – a post-apoc story telling how humans came to be conquered by a race of alien robots, and how they begin the fight back.
The author, Gary Whitta, has an impressive CV, and from his cinematic screenwriting credits alone – The Book of Eli, After Earth and Rogue One – you can expect good things. I inhaled Gundog in audio format over the space of a week, and from the first keening strains of the accompanying music, evocative of HBO’s brilliant The Last of Us, I was pretty confident this would be something I’d like a lot. And I did – it held my attention for nine episodes and ten and a half hours of story, brightening my commute and a gruelling weekend of home decoration.
It tells the story of Dakota Bregman, a young engineer living in one of the alien Mek’s resettlement camps in the aftermath of their conquest of Earth. It’s a solid setup, given a fun twist by the circumstances of the Mek’s invasion – the prisoners are told that the visitors came in peace, promising technological advancements and medical miracles in exchange for some of Earth’s seeds and water to restore their dying planet, only for the humans to decide to take what was offered by force. A bloody war ended in the Mek’s favour, and since then humans have lived as slaves in work-camps, any disobedience punished by electro-stunning or death. Dakota’s skills are enough to secure a meagre future for her and her disabled brother but the arrival of an outsider named Falk – who claims to know how to fight back against the Mek – calls into question all her hopes and beliefs. Before long Dakota and Falk are outside the camp and heading for ‘The Four Faces’ – a secret location that might hold the secret to humanity’s future.
Gundog is beautifully paced. Whitta’s expertise in storycraft shines from every chapter, and the story unfolds naturally through a series of twists and turns towards an exciting conclusion. You can definitely see his screenwriting background, particularly in the slightly distant third person style he’s chosen to use when narrating action and the passage of time, but that doesn’t mean that the story lacks interiority – we spend plenty of time in Dakota’s head while she comes to terms with the changes in the world around her. The relationships between the characters are well drawn – I was particularly moved by the interplay between Dak and the elder brother who kept her safe in their early years and how that changes with their imprisonment and his injuries. There are a few shocking moments that nonetheless make perfect narrative sense, and the first half of the book is a steady, tense build-up to a satisfying mid-point reveal. After that it’s an accelerating downhill run to a dramatic conclusion that leaves plenty of options open for a sequel.
There’s a lot of background to this story, and while Whitta does a good job of getting the key details out in the opening chapters, I would gladly have spent more time with Dak experiencing what had gone before rather than reading through a fairly tight narrative summary. Similarly there were a few areas where I felt a bit more foreshadowing would have strengthened the storytelling – on quite a few occasions Dakota or other characters only recalled their foreknowledge of some relevant plot point at the moment where it became relevant, which felt a little too neat – and a few key events and conversations were summarised rather than shown in full, where the subject was interesting enough to warrant a bit more detail without detriment to the pacing.
Overall, though, it’s a solid piece of New Adult Fiction that makes a satisfying read, and that would translate beautifully to the screen. There’s enough material for an Andor-length series or (with some judicious cutting) a feature film with plenty of witty banter, exciting action scenes and moments of genuine emotion. It’s also clearly written with one eye on a sequel, and I’ll definitely be looking out for the next instalment when it comes.
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Jude lives in Glasgow with her husband, two daughters, dog, cats and rabbits, and writes dark stories in the gaps between work as a surgeon and wrangling her menagerie.
Her short fiction has been published in numerous anthologies including Haunted Voices: An Anthology of Scottish Gothic Storytelling, Places We Fear To Tread (Cemetery Gates Media) and The Corona Book of Ghost Stories. She is the author of Creed: Ashes of Cadia for Black Library, and is currently working on her fifth novel. She drinks her coffee with oat milk.
Follow Jude on Twitter for more information.
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Massive thanks to Jude for writing this great review for Track of Words – much appreciated! Hopefully you enjoyed the review as much as I did – I’m definitely keen to read Gundog now…or maybe listen to it as a podcast.
If you haven’t already, make sure you check out my review of Jude’s brilliant Black Library debut Creed: Ashes of Cadia.
Gundog is out now – you can find it as a podcast in all the usual places, or order a copy* via the links below:
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*If you buy anything using one of these links, I will receive a small affiliate commission – see here for more details.