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A review by brooke_review
Your Robot Dog Will Die by Arin Greenwood
2.0
Thanks to NetGalley and Soho Press for a digital ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Nano lives on Dog Island, where dogs are revered, yet caged and studied. You see, a previous genetic experiment on our canine companions went awry, and dogs were thus labeled deadly and dangerous. All the remaining dogs were euthanized with “Kinderend,” a euthanasia drug, and a select few were kept on Dog Island to be examined. This isn’t the only strange thing happening on Dog Island. Instead of keeping “organic” dogs as pets, people on Dog Island are given robot dogs, which are replaced yearly when the new model comes out. Nano can’t help but get attached to her robotic pets, and cries whenever one is taken from her. This is life on Dog Island.
Things go awry one night when Nano is feeding the organic dogs with her mom. Nano discovers a litter of puppies who are quickly euthanized by her mom (we can’t have dangerous dogs breeding, now can we?). That is, all except one that Nano hides meet their “kinder end.” And this is where the wild adventure into dog smuggling, animal abuse, and secret underground worlds begins.
When I read the premise for Your Robot Dog Will Die, I was excited to jump into this book. Dystopia is my thing, and I hadn’t read a book about a dystopian dog world before. However, Your Robot Dog Will Die suffers from poor execution, outlandish plot points, and confusing storytelling. Through much of the book, I couldn’t tell if everything I was reading was a “big joke.” I was waiting for the wool to be pulled from my eyes, to get some sign that this novel was satire. I felt this way because there is essentially no world-building, and readers are thrown into a world where dogs have gone rogue, people say “thank Dog,” instead of “thank God,” water is scarce, and people actually print their clothes. There was some background provided on the dogs, but I was given no other points of reference for any of the other odd turns of events. This made it very hard to “get into” the story and really find it believable. As an adult, I honestly felt confused through much of the book, and can imagine young readers feeling equally muddled. There were also descriptive passages about animal abuse that were uncomfortable to read. That is probably the point, but for a book being marketed as a must-read for dog lovers, I found it very upsetting to have the images and descriptions of abuse thrust upon me. Lastly, the climax involving the book’s villain was so out there ... no spoilers, but I just wasn’t buying it.
I think that if this book took itself more seriously, did some major world-building at the beginning, and had a more believable and knowledgable narrator, it could be so much more than it unfortunately is.
Nano lives on Dog Island, where dogs are revered, yet caged and studied. You see, a previous genetic experiment on our canine companions went awry, and dogs were thus labeled deadly and dangerous. All the remaining dogs were euthanized with “Kinderend,” a euthanasia drug, and a select few were kept on Dog Island to be examined. This isn’t the only strange thing happening on Dog Island. Instead of keeping “organic” dogs as pets, people on Dog Island are given robot dogs, which are replaced yearly when the new model comes out. Nano can’t help but get attached to her robotic pets, and cries whenever one is taken from her. This is life on Dog Island.
Things go awry one night when Nano is feeding the organic dogs with her mom. Nano discovers a litter of puppies who are quickly euthanized by her mom (we can’t have dangerous dogs breeding, now can we?). That is, all except one that Nano hides meet their “kinder end.” And this is where the wild adventure into dog smuggling, animal abuse, and secret underground worlds begins.
When I read the premise for Your Robot Dog Will Die, I was excited to jump into this book. Dystopia is my thing, and I hadn’t read a book about a dystopian dog world before. However, Your Robot Dog Will Die suffers from poor execution, outlandish plot points, and confusing storytelling. Through much of the book, I couldn’t tell if everything I was reading was a “big joke.” I was waiting for the wool to be pulled from my eyes, to get some sign that this novel was satire. I felt this way because there is essentially no world-building, and readers are thrown into a world where dogs have gone rogue, people say “thank Dog,” instead of “thank God,” water is scarce, and people actually print their clothes. There was some background provided on the dogs, but I was given no other points of reference for any of the other odd turns of events. This made it very hard to “get into” the story and really find it believable. As an adult, I honestly felt confused through much of the book, and can imagine young readers feeling equally muddled. There were also descriptive passages about animal abuse that were uncomfortable to read. That is probably the point, but for a book being marketed as a must-read for dog lovers, I found it very upsetting to have the images and descriptions of abuse thrust upon me. Lastly, the climax involving the book’s villain was so out there ... no spoilers, but I just wasn’t buying it.
I think that if this book took itself more seriously, did some major world-building at the beginning, and had a more believable and knowledgable narrator, it could be so much more than it unfortunately is.