The Moose Jaw

Aw, crap.  I had to downgrade this enjoyable nightstand read by Mike Delany from four stars to three stars to protest its hackneyed, supernatural ending.  The occult explanation of events that had been vaguely foretold and lightly foreshadowed was never relinquished, only rationalized.  The characters didn't so much solve the mystery as have the spooky solution revealed unto them. 

Pity, because I'd been engrossed in the adventure.  The novel's first half included several well-written chapters depicting Alaskan outdoorsmanship and backwoods cabin life, among the best I've read.  The third quarter placed the protagonist in more and more danger, but events still lay within the bounds of plausibility.  I was sure that within the denouement we would learn some natural explanation of weird happenings: something in the spring water; some hallucinogenic plant inadvertently consumed; some mental health issue spurring the protagonist's prodigious consumption of alcohol and increasing paranoia.  Some prankster in a bear suit.  Something.

But this magic-laced ending, as ripe as a hunting party after a two-week Alaskan fishing trip?  Aw, crap.

Side note: there's a touch of arrested development in the author's Hefneresque depiction of a relationship with a damsel in distress, a-heh, a-heh.  (Spoiler: goose grease.)

The Dog Stars

Globetrotting author Peter Heller writes adventure, travel, and other non-fiction, often involving dangerous situations.  His first novel, The Dog Stars, is a post-apocalyptic Western set in Colorado, with wonderful, lyrical writing about private piloting, mountain stream fishing, and a beloved canine companion.  Replace the commas with slashes and you have an epic survivalist tale in free verse.

The book includes rich explorations on meanings and purposes in a new, harsh reality (i.e., shoot high-caliber weapons first, explore meanings and purposes later).  Heller's protagonist Hig, a Cessna pilot and outdoorsman turned aerial scout and turf-defender by necessity, has a sliver more heart and hope than his physically and emotionally bunkered neighbor, but you wouldn't know it by his lethal actions against both hostile and non-hostile intruders.  Even so, while his partner tends their airfield arsenal, Hig entertains the notion of a life beyond, fueled by a chance radio reception which leads him to a journey of peril and discovery.

(I've got Olivia Wilde as the doctor; that's probably just me.)

My fellow Dartmouth alumni will appreciate Heller's drop-in references -- he also spent four years in Hanover -- including an impassioned, fitting sidebar on Eastern Establishment condescension toward the West.

I look forward with anticipation to reading more of Peter Heller's adventurous works.  While I'm more of a National Geographic than a Field and Stream fan, anyone who can turn the end of civilization into a nature appreciation treatise while his hero dodges bullets is worth a gander.