Book Review: The Dog Stars - November 2012

Book Review - November 2012
The Dog Stars by Peter Heller
Fiction - 336 pages - published August 2012
Voted as One of Amazon's Best Books of the Month for August 2012

Synopsis (from Amazon.com):
Amazon Best Books of the Month, August 2012: Adventure writer Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars is a first novel set in Colorado after a superflu has culled most of humanity. A man named Hig lives in a former airport community—McMansions built along the edge of a runway—which he shares with his 1956 Cessna, his dog, and a slightly untrustworthy survivalist. He spends his days flying the perimeter, looking out for intruders and thinking about the things he’s lost—his deceased wife, the nearly extinct trout he loved to fish. When a distant beacon sparks in him the realization that something better might be out there, it’s only a matter of time before he goes searching. Poetic, thoughtful, transformative, this novel is a rare combination of the literary and highly readable.

My Review:
I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher.  I was concerned when reading the back of the book that this was just yet another end of the world story which the market seems so saturated with over the last couple of years but I could not have been more wrong!  This book is beauty personified in an anything but beautiful world that is left after a disease has killed most of earth's inhabitants and animals.  The writer was so bold in his vision of the ugly and the good left on the planet.  What I especially loved was the fact that this book never became too depressing but never "rose colored glasses" either.  To me, these characters could not have been any truer in their complexity and their ever changing emotions and views.  I loved the main character Hig and even came to love his neighbor.  The scenery described in certain scenes and the emotions it evoked in Hig were heartbreaking and lyrical, hopeful and dreadful all at the same time.  It is a rare talent who would be able to balance these extremes and Peter Heller is that master!  Don't miss this AMAZING BOOK!