Andrew MackayBesprekingen

DNF at 38%

I sometimes leave books at the back row to get back to in case I am in the mood to continue, but I don't know. I think I would rather watch paint dry than continuing. And I hate myself for it because I loved the first chapter so much. The concept of training a super awesome cat to travel to Saturn because it reacts coherently when exposed to a weird alien sound is just too cool to be true.

The problem is... well, the cat is awesome and she never fails. It is the worldbuilding and humans that drove me nuts.

First off, like... everyone acts like they have never seen a muslim before... in modern era London. This book is supposed to happen a few centuries into the future so unless gigantic hordes of people moved to other countries even though England continues to be a weathy nation for some weird reason, I wanted to claw my nails against a blackboard when the child owner of the cat reacts in such a freightful way when he meets an Iranian veterinarian that will be in charge of caring for his pet cat.

Heck, the book doesn't even make a lot of sense in other ways. Airplane travel is now very rare because nobody wants to use fossil fuels, but people don't travel long distances by boat. The book has the technology to travel to Saturn within a very short timeframe and have moon colonies, but human cities don't have hyperloops and Houston Texas still relies on gas cars for short distance travel. Huh?

Seems like the book has 3 superpowers in the future: USA, England and Russia. I would have wanted to really spice things up. Have Nigeria or India as one of the great powers to make things more original and the space cat competition feel truly international. The book can't really agree on whether to make the worldbuilding really futuristic or nestled in the Cold War era of the XXth century. A lot of the technology in the book feels dated even for 2021.

I knew beforehand about the animal cruelty featured in the space cat competition. It wasn't a deal breaker for me, but I think the tests seemed rather unrealistic. In particular in the sense they allowed adult cats to compete knowing they would likely be very elderly by the time they were trained and reached Saturn. And non sterilized cats? Huh? Even today, Europe has very strict laws governing keeping fertile pets. I would assume 200 years from now, it would be highly unlikely anyone from a wealthy nation would own an unsterilized pet. People living in Belgium have to follow insanely long waiting lists to adopt a pet with few chances to get to meet their new furry friend and if the animal's personality and energy level is a good fit for their own. None of this seems to be important with the worldbuilding of this book, which drove me nuts.

And what is with the racism anyways? One minute, the USA astronaut is such a goodie good shoes guy, the next minute he nips at the Iranian vet for no reason. Like, I seriously doubt NASA would allow a temperamental guy like that to join a long-term space mission. They purposely weed those people out and only select the candidates with the most docile personalities. It would be a really bad idea to stuff 10 emotionally volatile people into a spaceship. Better go the whole 9 yards and give them all machetes and pitchforks while you're at it.

2.5 Stars

This was almost a very good book.

The premise and the basic story actually are very good and well thought out. Unfortunately, while the subject matter is best suited to the fourteen and up crowd, it reads like an early grade chapter book especially during the cat trials and during much-needed descriptions of what was happening near Saturn. I also couldn’t tell if the social commentary was supposed to be humor, satire, or completely serious. However, I did feel like it wasn’t completely necessary. Interesting backstory ranging to the 21st century hinted at world-building that never quite reached the mark and was lost in the cold war aspects of the story, where the exposition was often jumbled and confusing. Are they allies? Why are they not?

Jelly along with Jamie and his mother are wonderful warm-blooded characters that immediately engendered emotional investment. Very few of any of the other major characters seemed worth my time and the bad guys read more like elementary schoolyard bullies than adult international spies.

Finally, the copy I ended up with could have used another edit as the book’s title “Infinity Claws” and a major plot point the “Infinity Clause” seemed to be used interchangeably at several points. That along with other minor spelling issues (typos), sadly, made reading this to the end a bit of chore. I couldn’t even finish the interview questions at the end because of them.

This series has so much potential this book just doesn’t live up to.

During COVID-19

Andrew McKay pulls no punches in My Corona. He's pissed about the situation and his characters face a world where COVID-19 has morphed into a true nightmare. Abundant violence amidst racist and classist discrimination combined with illness and drug-fueled hallucinations are tough to get through. Ultimately, the stark ending serves to make the reader stop and think. And, if it doesn't, you're in big trouble. Read the afterward, it's worth the whole book.

Original, weirdly funny and yet wildly accurate this is one of those books you won't want to miss.

Whole-heartedly recommended.

From a workstation on the moon in the twenty-second century, where a team has monitored strange screeching noises emanating from Saturn for six years, a member calls his family, only to notice that the family cat, a female, reacts strangely to the sounds coming through the transmission. By this pure chance, USARIC, the American-Russian consortium tracking the sounds, discovers that only female cats react to the code, which is the only link they have to an expedition that disappeared while searching for the source of what’s now called “the Saturn Cry.” This realization leads to a worldwide contest to find the feline most suited to venture into space. The ultimate choice is Jelly Anderson, the beloved cat of five-year-old Jamie Anderson of Great Britain, and while his mother recognizes the value to their impoverished lives of the $250,000 reward for Jelly’s two-year mission, he regrets letting her go.

However, as a member of Space Opera Beta, Jelly exceeds expectations and, with the help of a supercomputer named Pure Genius, interprets the bizarre sounds. They’re coming from what turns out to be the lost expedition, Space Opera Alpha, which is hiding, abandoned, on the dark side of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. However, they have no clue what the two-word message means. When the crew ventures to the deserted ship to investigate, they discover carnage and mayhem, as well as saboteurs in their midst. Only through the bravery of their captain, and the human-like heroics of Jelly, does the crew survive to return to their ship, but what will happen as Space Opera Beta runs out of oxygen?

As encapsulated in the name of the vessels, Andrew Mackay has constructed the perfect space opera. Star Cat: Infinity Claws is a suspenseful beginning to Team Beta’s, and more importantly, Jelly’s, journey to discover just what lurks in the voids of the universe.

This is a boy’s own adventure, with a horrific body count. Andrew Mackay is a history teacher, and it shows in the level of detail in the story. The history is very well researched and the detail ensures that the story remains consistent throughout and nothing jars the narrative flow.

The Young Lions of the title are both teenage boys in their fourth year at a boarding school in the fictional town of Hereward in East Anglia. Both of the boys (Alan Mitchell and Sam Roberts) are members of their school officer training corps and join the local Home Guard battalion when it is called to fight off a German landing near King’s Lynn.

The action is described comparably with other first hand accounts of battle in world war two that I’ve read (and I specialise in that sort of history). The battle ends with an atrocity commited by the SS, which both boys witness although neither of them is directly involved. Again this matches well with the witness testimony of similar events in WW2. So all entirely believable.

One of the bits I particularly liked about Young Lions was that all the characters have both strengths and weaknesses, even the Germans. In fact there isn’t really a clear cut line between good and evil, both sides commit atrocities, although the SS ones seem more random and crueler than the resistance ones. Nevertheless innocents are killed by both sides.

Another interesting bit is the inter-service rivalry between the occupying forces. This seems to be a close parallel to reality, and is something often missed in fiction. Having read hundreds of WW2 histories it is clear that the real reason that the Germans lost (apart from biting off way more than they could chew) is because they really didn’t get inter-service co-operation and the need for a war economy from the start.

One of the key threads through the book was the rivalry between the Army and the SS, as well as the need for the occupation commanders to cover up where their men screwed up. All very realistic in my view and making the story even more interesting.

An aspect of the story that was a little jarring though was the essentially impulsive and unplanned nature of most of the violence, although some of this is the characterisation of Sam Roberts. Sam is a relatively niaive teenager when it comes to planning and he doesn’t always think through the consequences, nor does he stop to consider whether the motivations of others are as obvious as they seem. This leads him to getting into situations where rapid lethal violence and a large element of luck are required to get him through. In a few of these situations other people pay the price.

The body count is incredibly high, I reckon at least 2,500 civilians are killed plus hundreds of soldiers. I didn’t really count, but so many that it would provoke a severe response from higher commanders, which we see a little of, but not a huge amount.

Overall I ver ymuch enjoyed Young Lions by Andrew Mackay and I would recommend it to anyone who likes alternate histories or who likes WW2 based action and adventure stories.