River of Teeth

**This book was reviewed for Macmillan-Tor/ Forge via Netgalley

River of Teeth hits you with the two-ton force of a raging bull hippo, dragging you down into the depths of well-wrought words. This is an alternate earth story of what life might have been like if the US went ahead with plans to import hippos to the marshlands of the south as a food source. This plan really was considered once, but discarded for the simple fact that hippos are damn dangerous. Temperamental and vicious, they are prone to attacking without provocation. Even the towering elephant and the short-sighted rhino, while dangerous in their own right, are not as ferocious.

Winslow Houndstooth is a man with a singular goal- revenge. Revenge against the ones responsible show more for his ranch burning, slaughtering his hundred plus hippos. He's not a hero… but he could be. Winslow is a mercenary of sorts now, and his most recent client is the US government. He’s to clear an area of marshland known as the Harriet of its feral hippo population. To do this, Winslow needs a team with very specialised skills. There's Hero, the demolitions expert, sharpshooter Calhoun, Adelia, the assassin, skilled in knife play, and grifter Archie, who is skilled in the use of a ball-n-chain weapon she calls a meteor hammer. Not everyone in this group is on the best of terms, and one can be dangerous just for the hells of it, but they've agreed to work together for a nice payout.

Of course, nothing is ever simple. Disaster strikes early on with an attack by a rogue feral before they've even reached the Harriet. Then there’s the little matter of river casino owner Travers who operates out of the Harriet and uses the ferals as a deterrent to cheaters or those who cause other problems. Despite his oily slick facade of cooperation, Travers has no intention of allowing anything to happen to his ferals. Betrayal from within shatters the company, leaving more than one dead or dying, and their mission more broken than they ever could imagine.

This was storyweaving at it's finest. It's got it all- witty dialogue, non-mushy romance, wonderful worldbuilding, and women who are kick-ass in their own right. With these diverse characters, and the initial nature of the caper (I mean, the operation), I was strongly reminded of the show Leverage. I could easily imagine our mastermind, Winslow, uttering Nate’s signature phrase “Let's go steal a …..”, filling in marsh. But never has such terrible betrayal fractured the trust between the Leverage team.

I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that part of the personality and character traits woven into the story included diverse sexual orientation as well. It is neatly done, being just another subtle element, but it was unique in my reading experience. In other books (thus far) that I've read, if that diversity is there, you are bludgeoned with it, as if to force acknowledgement. Here, it is as it should be, in both stories, and in real-life, a blended aspect that simple just is, with no need for justification. There's a person who is bi, a person who seems to favour only their own gender, a person who has a non-binary orientation. The latter was handled very well.

I devoured River of Teeth in a day, and I'm ready for Taste of Marrow!

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IN NUTSHELL
This was such fun. A stylish, vigorously playful, shamelessly over-the-top trope-twisting Alternative history Western that was as vivid as a graphic novel.

I stumbled across this novella while looking at Sarah Gailey’s biography after finishing their extraordinary horror novella, ‘Spread Me’. I adored the alternative history premise and Sarah Gailey’s playful attitude towards it. I liked that they came up with a novel 'What if?" alternative history question, based on an obscure piece of American history and then spawned a whole world from it. What really sold me on the novella was that she didn't just want to explore the scenario, like a thought experiment; she wanted to have fun with it. So she moved everything back show more a few decades, allowing them to write a cowboy novel that joyously subverts all those square-jawed, white, hetero male stereotypes while still summoning up the spirit of the kind of Western movie / TV show I grew up watching.

All of the characters in 'River Of Teeth' were larger than life. Only three of them were white Cismales (and two of them are not at all nice). The rest are a colourful collection of talented misfits who make the Magnificent Seven seem like Frat boys.

Best of all, there are Hippos. Hippos you can ride like horses, Hippos you can eat like cows and feral Hippos that will eat you. Satha Gailey has created a whole Hippo industry, complete with how Hippos are farmed and ridden, how the feral ones hunt and all the associated jargon and techniques.

The plot is full of betrayals, old and new, violent confrontations, and slowly smouldering relationships. All of which builds to a spectacularly explosive climax that had me cheering for the good guys (or, at least, the guys I liked most and who I wanted to win. Good was probably an overstatement).

'River Of Teeth' is the first novella in a series, but it works well as a standalone book.

I recommend listening to the audiobook; Peter Berkrot's narration matches the over-the-top tone of the text while still capturing the emotions of the characters. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geZVCpy8qpA show less

I loved this a lot! River of Teeth takes place in Louisiana, in an alternate history where the US imported hippos to use as an alternative meat source. Winslow Houndstooth and his crew are tasked by the US government to free some feral hippos from an overrun bayou. The premise sounds wild and the execution was wild, and it worked really well. The heist aspect was right up my alley, and the cast of characters was the icing on the cake. The main crew includes people of color, gay characters, a non-binary character, kickass women... it’s so good. And the ending made me want the next book asap.

This review and others posted over at my blog.

This book was so much damn fun! I don’t want to say too much about the plot because the book is so short. But the story follows Winslow Houndstooth (ok, how awesome is that name?!) and the crew he picks to help him rid an area of the Mississippi of the feral hippos. While hired by the government, Winslow is also using this opportunity to exact revenge upon Travers, the man who runs a casino and makes good use of the ferals surrounding his property (he feeds people to them!)

First of all, how cool is this idea!? According to Gailey, this is actually something that was considered by Congress to solve a meat shortage at the time. I’m way into this cowboys-except-on-hippos era America that show more Gailey created. Feral hippos, hippos that are bred for riders, albino hippos, SO MANY HIPPOS. How many of you have read books that centered around hippos? Because I sure haven’t read any before now and I can’t believe what I’ve been missing.

Second, THE CHARACTERS. Winslow is a bisexual, gun-slinging, hippo-riding, incredibly dapper badass and I luff him. The culturally colorful crew he gathers is comprised of a non-binary explosions master, a large-and-in-charge French conwoman (who is my second favorite character), a pregnant assassin, and her sharpshooting ex-lover. They’re up against Travers, the quietly menacing owner of the land the gang is set to remove the hippos from, and he’s not afraid to toss someone to the hungry, hungry, hippos if they cross him. Ok, that was a terrible joke (was it even a joke?!) but I don’t care!

If you’re looking for a fantastic and diverse group of characters (a la Becky Chambers) and a unique setting (think Wild West, but with hippos instead of horses) then I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I can’t wait to get my hands on the next installment and my only complaint is that this was too short! Go read this book! show less

What a fun and fantastic read! Back in the early 20th century, the US gov decides to introduce hippo farming to the Mississippi to deal with a meat shortage. Well and then hippos get loose and end up feral and whole parts of the river are almost unnavigable due to the ferocious beasts (did you know hippos were ferocious man eaters? We’ve all learned something today). Enter Winslow Houndstooth and his merry band of savage criminals and con artists intent on freeing OIe Miss of her hippo problem. Gailey works in great queer representation– bisexual lead, genderfluid secondary character, without any dramatics or even exposition. And the story is a rollicking, funny, adventurous good time.

I really, really, really wanted to like this.

And I really, really, really did not.

Okay. I did like the diversity of the cast. I liked that there were more than one woman, a nonbinary love interest, a queer MC. That was good. Especially the normalization of the nonbinary character's gender and pronouns. No big deal. No big reveal. It was good. I liked that.

I didn't like anything else.

First of all: structurally the story is not good. I recently read another novella of about the same length yet it felt so much more COMPLETE than this book, so much realer, more substantial, because the author spent time building up her characters so you cared about them. This book? The characters are barely given a few pages of build-up and the show more relationships between them are like, neither show or tell. You don't have enough time or reasons to care about them. When things happen to them you barely blink because you don't know them well enough to be emotionally invested. Twist pack zero punch because everything just happens, without a moment to understand why or how.

Second: this is an alternate history of the US in the 19th century, set in the American South with a goddamn TIMELINE in the backmatter and slavery is not mentioned ONCE. Was there a Civil War? Is slavery legal? Who knows??? While a character is portrayed as being black, there's literally not a single mention of slavery. In the timeline it mentions Ulysses Grant being president at some point so maybe there was a Civil War? Maybe slavery was ended? Maybe???? Like I'm not expecting a detailed history in this book about hippos but if you're going to set something in any version of the 19th century American South without mentioning slavery at all than you're doing something wrong. I'm sorry. Slavery built the South and the neat idea of introducing hippos doesn't change that.

I really wish I could have liked this more but I gotta say, it failed on a whole lot of levels for me :/ show less

Set in the 1890s in an alternate America, this novella should have been a lot of fun. There are hippos (because a few decades earlier, the US government imported them to help with hunger then things got a bit weird, some of them escaped and tuned feral and bayous of Louisiana were never the same). There are characters which have complicated back histories and even more complicated loyalties. There is a villain (or 3). And yet something did not really work.

It is a western - with everyone riding hippos and set in Louisiana and on the rivers and not in the prairies but it follows the usual patterns of any western. A charismatic leader collects a bunch of not really law-abiding citizens for a mission - to eradicate the feral hippos. Not show more everyone wants that to happen of course - someone had found a way to use the situation for his gains. Add a few twists on loyalties (old and new) and a bunch of hungry hippos and that should have been a campy funny western.

I am not sure if the problem is that this novella was overwritten or if it actually needed more space. The pacing was just so uneven and even outright wrong in some places that I kept wondering if it needed a good editor or if the author shied away from making it a short novel and stuck into the novella length to fit the publisher as opposed to following where the story wanted to go. And then there were the characters - they had back stories which were fun but their current actions did not always make sense - even if they were supposed to be surprising - they felt more like types than like actual characters and when that got combined with the back stories, it clashed badly.

There are more stories in this setting and I suspect I will check them sooner or later - the world is fascinating. But the novella as a whole is not really working...

PS: Apparently there was indeed a plan at one point to import hippos. See https://www.wired.com/2013/12/hippopotamus-ranching/ for details. show less