Book Review: David Moody’s ‘DOG BLOOD’

David Moody’s Hater (reviewed here), the first novel in the Hater trilogy, closed with such an unexpected cliffhanger could you imagine waiting 4 years for the sequel Dog Blood?! As soon as I finished Hater, I made a trek to the city just north of me to a lesser known chain, not sure if I’d actually find it. When I arrived, I practically ran to the display that houses new releases, knocking over innocent bystanders (don’t worry, I’m not a Hater!), but it wasn’t there. “Don’t panic,” I told myself. I checked the fiction/literature section. They have Hater, so certainly they have Dog Blood, I thought. I checked the end displays and the summer reading displays in the center aisle, but to no avail. Finally, as I was heading toward the exit, in a last ditch effort I scanned the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section and there it was! Same beautiful cover, but this time the journey with Danny McCoyne would be unmistakably more arduous.

CAUTION: There are major The Sixth Sense level spoilers to Hater below. If you haven’t read the first in the series please do, I highly recommend it (review here).

The second book in the trilogy, Dog Blood, picks up a few months after the end of the first story. When we left our protagonist, Danny, he had turned into what he despised and feared most, a Hater! Just before his wife Lizzie fled with their only daughter Ellis and their two sons, Edward and Josh, Danny had realized that Ellis too was a Hater. But before Danny had the opportunity to take the young girl, his family had escaped and military forces had made their way to Danny’s home, scouring the city for Haters to subdue or execute. The Haters that are restrained and drugged by the uninfected soldiers are taken to a gas chamber to be destroyed. And those that can get away continue to fight another day against their newfound enemy; the Unchanged (as they are known by Haters). Danny fights against starvation or execution on his mission to find Lizzie and ultimately Ellis. This mission is the thread that ties Dog Blood together. Their reunion is Danny’s last glimmer of hope.

In Hater Moody gave us mere glimpses of his ability to illustrate sick scenes of gruesome brutality by peppering violent outbreaks throughout the storyline.  In Dog Blood he abuses the reader’s mind with unrelenting violence, cruelty, and destruction as the city succumbs to complete anarchy. Now an all out war, the population has been unequally split between Haters and Unchanged. The city Danny once lived in, and perhaps the rest of the world, has been reduced to rubble, littered with garbage, drenched in accumulating human waste, and cluttered with rotting, diseased corpses complicating the already dismal conditions. Blood flows indiscriminately from Haters and Unchanged. Moody’s descriptiveness is so convincing that the reader can almost smell the stench of the rotting corpses piling up in the streets. Although grotesque, the circumstance is certainly in the realm of possibility. My imagination wandered effortlessly between Moody’s fantasy world and images of war torn countries and recent natural disasters. While some scenes bring to mind obvious real life parallels, like the gas chamber used to exterminate Haters, others creep more subtly into your consciousness. The unsanitary conditions, lack of food and water, and in-fighting on both sides of the battle embody real life situations that are equally gruesome. With the battle in full swing, it no longer matters what caused the outbreak or why. All that matters now is survival.

The same paranoia that gripped the reader in Hater is still present, but this time it’s all consuming. Maybe you will find yourself, as I did, panic-stricken, as you realize you’re not ready for the apocalypse, whichever way it may come. If there was no food or water, and human waste, trash, and rotting corpses littered the streets spreading disease, could you survive? Would you want to? And since these scenarios are not limited to fantastic tales of the macabre it’s even more disturbing. It’s often easy to forget you’re reading a work of fiction as Dog Blood contains unsettling imagery similar to some autobiographical war memoirs. As Danny moves from one location to another in nomadic fashion, observing the carnage of the battles fought between Haters and Unchanged, it becomes apparent that if one side is dominant and some survive, there may not be anything worthy of rebuilding.

In Dog Blood we get more than just our protagonist-turned-Hater perspective. Cleverly, Moody has interspersed chapters narrated by Danny with third person narration that offer glimpses into the side of the Unchanged. This device delivers some unexpected turns that continue to pull the story along into surprising territory. As the narrative weaves back and forth from one world to the other, you will find that there is little difference between the sides’ goals and each situation is no less dismal than the other. Ultimately, both camps are interested in two things; survival and destroying the enemy. Each camp has its own complications. Haters must contend with a more animalistic breed of their own that is driven purely by hate and absent of both logic and reasoning: Brutes. Brutes cannot control their urge to kill even if acting upon it is a deadly risk. They lead other Haters into death traps orchestrated by the Unchanged armies and wound Haters in their hasty attacks. Similarly, the Unchanged must contend with distrust, paranoia, and a zero-tolerance military force that kills innocent civilians at any sign of anger, even if only caused by frustration and fatigue.

Moody’s post-apocalyptic world is utterly frightening and every page is a struggle for the people living this waking nightmare, Hater and Unchanged alike. The trip into Dog Blood won’t be easy, and it will surely be bleak, but it’s a journey worth making. Honestly, I was relieved when it was over, but I mean that in the most complimentary way. It is a testament to Moody’s skill that his words are able to take shape in the hearts and minds of his readers making this world real, at least while you’re along for the ride. I look forward to the third part to the trilogy, but for now I will happily return to the comforts of running water, grocery store shelves that are fully stocked, and the simplicity of worrying only about which book I’ll read next.

Visit David Moody’s website and check out the prequel to Dog Blood, Everything And Nothing for free!