Review: Mort(e) by Robert Repino

Mort(e) by Robert Repino
Published: January 2015
Series: War with No Name #1

Tagline: Mort(e), an anthropomorphized house cat, treks through a world-ending war between humans and car-sized ants in order to rescue his platonic (?) best friend, a dog named Sheba.

Plot Overview (because it's pretty weird!): Let's start from the beginning. Ants have evolved in such a way that they are super-intelligent, some even growing to be larger than vehicles. At the same time, the ants have evolved most animals so they have hands instead of paws, they stand on their hind legs, and they can think and talk. Yes, ants have made animals sentient and aware. Animals change overnight, not having to slowly learn how to understand or read, but simply knowing. As one can imagine, this causes many animals to rebel against humans (specifically their 'masters') and the War with No Name rages. Meanwhile, Mort(e) fights the War with No Name only as a way to pass time until he can somehow find an orange and white dog he knew from before he was aware. Her name is Sheba and she means the world to Mort(e).

My review: This book is AMAZING. Repino creates these extremely original characters that grow over time and create lasting relationships with each other and the reader. I found it particularly interesting to find out some of the dark pasts of the characters introduced. They are presented as stories of slaves being freed from masters, because in reality all of the pets that become sentient realize that they have been enslaved within their homes and made to live their lives a certain way.

I found that a lot of times, you can take yourself out of this book being about cats standing on their back legs and talking to ants with weird headsets. It's strange, yes, but Repino makes the animals very humanoid because they are supposed to take the place of humans on Earth, so they adjust to speaking, standing, living in 'normal' ways.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in a different sort of war book. It's violent at times, also reminding me of an apocalyptic novel. The animals that survive the humans must make do with the remnants of their humans' abodes, scrounging for food when their predecessors were omnivores and some animals are obligate carnivores. This novel was an extremely original take on a revolution that may never come to pass, but I would definitely consider it for an alternate history.

Rating: 5/5 stars