A review by jrobles76
Dog Blood by David Moody

4.0

Definitely a great sequel to Hater. I'm a fan of different uses of point of view and this novel uses first person for Danny, a third person omniscient narrator, and a 3rd person limited to tell the story of Mark and his wife, a couple living inside the quarantine zones. It's great in that it lets you see the world of the haters and the normals. The most interesting choice is to only use first person for Danny, one of the "haters". The novel forces you to be in the mind of, essentially, the bad guys. You're purposefully distanced by the 3rd person narrative from sympathizing with the normal people. It's a great device, because you know that you'd probably be one of the normal people, "the unchanged", yet you're in the mind of the killers. Not to get too socio-political, but with the way the unchanged are like refugees, it's almost a comment on how we should try to understand more what displaced people feel like. "but for the grace of god" and all that. If a catastrophe strikes we could be displaced without any rhyme or reason. The author is from England, and in Europe they deal with displaced people more than we do here, but just thinking about Katrina and the people from Louisiana who had to leave their homes and move to new places. I felt like it was a comment on how "hate" serves to distance us and dehumanize those we don't like. Maybe he's trying to say we are all "haters". Or, maybe he's just making great horror fiction. Either way I hope he keeps it up.