This is Esme and I’s finalist in this year’s SPFBO!
I have historically bounced off a lot of Fletcher’s work, not because it isn’t well written or enjoyable, but because it is often super, super dark. I’ve been known to like some grimdark here and there but like… real dark, y’all.
Esme got super excited about this one though and described it as ‘as close to a cozy mystery that grimdark can get’ – and I had to see what that was about, so when I started getting ready to read her semis, I started here… and here we are!
WARDOGS ARE BORN TO DIE.
In the final days of the Demon Empire a lone wardog goes in search of the answer to the only question she cares about: Who murdered her mate?
Utterly unqualified to solve a mystery, Dogged Determination has but one advantage: She never, ever gives up.
From the heart of a massive empire to the deepest foreboding jungles, Dogged is an unstoppable force of will.
This is the story of Dogged Determination, or Dogged to her… friends? Dogged is a wardog, and wardogs are born to die. Wardogs are more or less a hybrid of a dog and a human that are used as soldiers in the Demon Emperor’s army. Their job is to ‘spread the Emperor’s peace’ which usually involves some violence. When Dogged’s mate is mysteriously murdered when a portal collapses, she takes it upon herself to learn why. She finds herself in places and situations that she doesn’t understand sometimes, but one thing about Dogged Determination is that she never gives up!
This was such a gem of a book that I wasn’t expecting. I don’t always love grimdark as a genre, and while I have always liked Fletcher’s writing, some of his books have absolutely straddled the line of how grim I can handle in a story. This one takes place in a universe where some of these grim settings are, but it remains lighthearted enough and dare I say… cozy in its way, that I turned on the audiobook and listened to it from start to finish in one go.
Dogged is such an easy character to cheer for because… and it is as easy as this… she’s a dog (WARdog). At the very heart of everything that Dogged is, she is a dog (WAR.DOG). She loves human kids just as we would love puppies, she gets excited about the chance to have people food. No matter what kind of giant weapon-wielding warrior creature she is, you still get to see her learn things from this place of innocence, and it kept me invested in the story.
Jarrod Taylor did a great job with the narration on this one, and that also helped keep me invested and interested long enough to listen to this whole thing in one go.
I had a solid 9/10 stars of fun with Dogged, and I hope that Fletcher writes more from this point of view. I recommend this to anyone who likes the idea of grimdark but finds it a little much sometimes.
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