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Dogs Of Truth by Kit Reed
01/10/2006 . Source: Danny O'Connor 
pub: TOR/Forge. 286 page hardback. Price: $14.95 (US), $19.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-765-31414-2. Buy Dogs Of Truth in the USA - or Buy Dogs Of Truth in the UK  check out website: www.tor.com
There are seventeen reasons to read this anthology. That's because there are seventeen short stories in it.
Let's deal with the old anthology trick first: 'They' put the two best stories in as first and last. 'They' also use the last one to indicate the new direction to be followed. I'm sure that my fellow paranoiacs don't need me to tell them who 'they' are.
'Grand Opening' is the first story. See how smug 'they' are with this double-entendre? It's about how at the age of ninety, Salman Rushdie finally meets his fatwa assassin in a kismet of mutual need amid a backdrop of a bankrupt New York saved from the grasping hands of the Sultan of Brunei by the combined forces of Disney, Bertelsmann and Microsoft. For me, this story was too knowing, too cute, too self-referential and too long. But I know that other people ['them'] rate it.
'Perpetua' is the last story. Knowing that an apocalypse is coming, a father miniaturises himself and his five daughters inside an alligator called Perpetua. The inside is like a sinuous ship with cabins and passageways. Molly thinks at first that that the apocalypse is a trick-play by the father to rein his daughters back into his control but the apocalypse is real enough. So, too, is the father's desire to hold his daughters back within his sway. Molly then manages a mind-meld with the alligator and gets to know all that the alligator knows about the cosmos, the universe and the coming Armageddon. Molly finds out three more things: How to de-miniaturise, how the alligator is being reined-in by her father and why the self-destruct button in the alligator's maw is on a timer. I thought that this was the best story, so maybe 'they' know a thing or two. As to future direction I could prophesy 'slipstream here we come' except that Kit Reed writes in a universe entirely of her own constructing without reference to the conditionality of slipstream or any other sub-genre norms.
I have chosen, in anthology order, the following stories to give a flavour of the book.
'High-Rise High' is a bravura romp. It is a melding of 'Prison Riot' and 'High School Prom' on steroids and speed. The ending allows for a everybody happy-ever-after. After upturning the story onto the darker edge of the collective middle-class psyche, that is.
'Yard Sale' is the story of a daughter selling-off her dead father's obsessive collections so that she, her sister and their dead mother can escape his still baleful influence. The dead mother escapes but the daughters are trapped inside the house until they can regain every single item that they sold. This is definitely a creepy tale from Creepsville central.
'Escape From Shark Island' hits all the theme buttons running and re-running in the author's nasty little head and all the better for it. The mother from hell suckles her young until she stifles the life out of them if they show any growth to independence. The revenge dénouement is particularly satisfying for the mortally damaged amongst us readers.
'Old Soldiers' is the story I found most disturbing but I'm a wimp. It's a story set in an old peoples' home where a demented old soldier slowly tells a cruel tale one layer at a time in counterpoint to a granddaughter seeing her grandmother fading away by degrees in front of her impotent eyes. A mysterious shadow becomes a real apparition of young undead soldier who takes away the old woman's life as lightly as taking her to a dance. Both this and the next story 'Playmate' get my nomination for 'Slipstream Story' of the anthology.
'Playmate' is where a busy working mom, living in a gated community is glad when a playmate arrives every weekend to play with her out-of-control three year-old son. But strange things happen by degrees. Do they change bodies or minds and does she delude herself into keeping the more manageable changeling?
Other stories also enthral. 'No Two Alike' is a delicious story of revenge where a man who thought he had bought a 'new life' finds out that he's been short-changed. 'Precautions' is a much more ironic and pantomime take on the themes first explored in 'Escape From Shark Island'. 'Captive Kong' fairly drips great gobbets of irony as it lurches along Armageddon's path.
In a few of her stories, Kit Reed employs the tactic of jumping in and out of the narrative, talking directly to the reader in between. The first time I encountered it, this worked for me but then the more she used it, the more irritated I began to get. So with that single caveat I can recommend this book for your delectation as the autumn nights draw towards winter and you, dear reader, can snuggle inside the dark comfort-blanket of her tellings.
Danny O'Connor
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