There’s also a connection with Fahrenheit 451, which of course has its own murderous ‘mechanical hound’. One of the most obvious is the 2011 Planet of the Apes reboot (i.e., animal sentience Vs human fear). In the meantime, there’s much that chimes with other SF and literary classics. Tchaikovsky spells out more than is always necessary, though at least you know exactly where the bioforms stand on war, capitalism and doing the right thing. I want very much to make Master proud of me.” But it’s also an easy read (with some violent action sequences). The book touches on big themes, including War, freedom, Big Tech and human/animal rights. Rex is one of them, with a voice and internal monologue reminiscent of Charlie in Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon. There are good signs this is a future classic. The phrase “dogs of war” appears in Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1: “cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.” Is Dogs of War a classic? Unfortunately, the world he must now navigate is dangerous, unfair and out to destroy whatever it can’t control. With Dogs of War, Adrian Tchaikovsky has managed the near impossible and delivered both masterfully The Eloquent Page A novel which takes war and broadens the concept to include peacetime ramifications of this new frontier technology through sociopolitical commentary which in turn gives the characters and theme a 360 feel delivered through. But as his AI abilities increase Rex breaks free of his coding and learns to think for himself. The bioforms were bred as killing machines.

He’s also a 7-foot tall bioform: part machine, part animal, and more than a little human in outlook. Added to that the Rex sections are a bit repetitive as he struggles to work out if he is being a good or bad dog throughout.All dogs go to heaven – but bad guys can go to hell in Tchaikovsky’s sci-fi tale of war, warriors and the rise of the machines.ĭogs of War is a Sci-Fi novel told (mostly) by Rex. If I was to pick at things that might put some off it would be that although the narration is overall of a very good standard, especially in the Rex sections, when we switch to Laurence Bouvard Rex suddenly sounds very weak, not surprisingly so hardly her fault but I found it distracting. There is a lot of action and it is brought to a very satisfying conclusion in terms of the story of Rex and his master being completed. It's another clever book though rather shorter and definitely more easily accessible than Children of Time. Just what does happen when you augment animals with tech and ask them to fight your battles? Dogs of War explores the relationship between a loyal dog and its master when that relationship is abused by it being used with bad intent. In Dogs of War he once again explores the best and worst of human behaviour with everyone's favourite target, big business, once again coming under fire. I guess it shouldn't surprise me given that Tchaikovsky had me rooting for an race of alien spiders in his previous book that in this one he got me attached to a partly robot killer dog called Rex! This is one clever author, albeit one who is jaundiced against the human race, though being often of similar persuasion I can't fault him for that.

Dogs of war adrian