A review by katnortonwriter
War Bunny by Christopher St. John

adventurous dark emotional funny tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

I see that I’m not the only person who felt like this was the post-apocalyptic, anarchist Redwall-offshoot that my life was missing. My sincere apologies to the author, since I won this book as part of a GoodReads giveaway and then failed to read it for months. I’ve already bought book two because once I finally got my act together, I had a great time.

In brief, prey animals follow a sort of rabbit Bible that tells them they are destined to be prey to the Blessed, aka predators. When a commune of prey animals forms a mutual aid warren and begins to fight back, it causes big problems. Yes, there’s a lot of rabbit politics being discussed. Yes, interpretations of Dah’s will are a big part of the story. I’m a nerd so I liked it. There’s also plenty of action so it moves at a steady clip.

I was raised on Redwall, Watership Down, Once Upon a Forest, and a variety of other vaguely traumatizing novels and movies about talking animals, so I am the target audience. There were times when the narrator broke the fourth wall and compared things in this world to pre-apocalypse human things that jarred me out of the story a bit. There were a few instances of language/terminology that I didn’t love, but they come from the mouths of characters in a way that made me feel like it was intentionally uncomfortable. Overall, I liked the story, I like the commentary, and I was glad that none of the animal enclaves were racially coded because that never ends well.

Also, there’s a raccoon on here named Wellbutrin, and I laughed every time it came up.