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A review by simlish
No Beast So Fierce: The Terrifying True Story of the Champawat Tiger, the Deadliest Animal in History by Dane Huckelbridge
3.0
Sometimes you want to read a horror story featuring an apex predator. This is a good book for those times. The horror is about equal parts environmental mismanagement and how colonialism really wrecks a place and "holy shit, a tiger can run 40 miles per hour AND has a thousand pound bite strength?"
This book read like the author wanted to be writing the biopic for Jim Corbett, slayer of man-eaters and conservationist. It's heavily sourced from Corbett's writings about the experience, and therefore gets more into his head than nonfiction often tries for. It also gets very cinematic in descriptions of the tiger and how she must have felt. If that's a plus for you, or at least not a deal-breaker, it's a good book!
Huckelbridge alternated the biopic-y chapters with the ones I personally liked better, which were a wider view of the conditions that create man-eaters and allow them to thrive. Colonialism really is a horror story, and sometimes it features charismatic fauna!
This book read like the author wanted to be writing the biopic for Jim Corbett, slayer of man-eaters and conservationist. It's heavily sourced from Corbett's writings about the experience, and therefore gets more into his head than nonfiction often tries for. It also gets very cinematic in descriptions of the tiger and how she must have felt. If that's a plus for you, or at least not a deal-breaker, it's a good book!
Huckelbridge alternated the biopic-y chapters with the ones I personally liked better, which were a wider view of the conditions that create man-eaters and allow them to thrive. Colonialism really is a horror story, and sometimes it features charismatic fauna!