Greg van Eekhout.
Voyage of the Dogs.
Harper Collins. 2018
rating : 4.5 : passes the time
review : 21 February 2020
Lopside, Champion, Bug, and Daisy are the Barkonauts, on a mission to heip their humans set up an outpost on a distant planet.
We are the dogs.
But when it’s time for Lopside and the others to wake up from their hibernation chambers and prepare for landing, they realize the humans are gone, food supplies are dangerously low, and the spaceship is failing.
We are alone.
Survival seems impossible, but Lopside and his friends are Barkonauts. And Barkonauts always complete their mission.
In the future, dogs have been bred to human-like intelligence levels. Four of these dogs have qualified as Barkonauts, crew assistants on the starship Laika, on its way to colonise another planet. But something goes wrong, and the Barkonauts wake from cold sleep alone on a damaged spaceship. They have been left to die, but they are determined to complete their mission.
This is a children’s book, and is a quick read. The dogs are very doggy, and also very resourceful. They are typically loyal, too, although that does take a dent when they eventually learn the story of the original space-faring Laika. It’s a rather insensitive name for a spaceship with dog crew, really.
Despite the good dogs, I have a couple of problems with the world building. First, if the dogs really do have the stated intelligence (which they must, given the way they communicate with the humans, and the later repairs they effect), then the backstory of Lopside’s early life is more horrifying than sad. Second, just how do they manage to effect those repairs? There is a lot of pushing buttons with noses and paws, but no mention of thumbs, or dexterity, or other support for manipulating the machinery. All this kept nagging at me as I read the otherwise engaging story of dog-kind overcoming adversity.