Number 38- The Cassowary- James Sabata

This is the third in a sequence of loosely connected books.  It started with The Roo by Alan Baxter - when Baxter wrote the book based on a cover drawn by Keelan Patrick Burke of a demonic kangaroo. From the online group where that all started, other writers decided to join in.  there was Playing Possum which I read last year, and this one.  There's one more called The Buck Stops here that I feel compelled to buy for all the wrong reasons now.

The Roo was the book that hooked me on Alan Baxter.  It's a great book, and the silliness works because it's well written.

Playing Possum was not great. Sadly, I'm not a great fan of this one either despite a promising start.

A zookeeper in the Toscano Wildlife preserve in Arizona tries to feed the resident cassowary. Unfortunately for him, it chooses to grab hold of him, drag him into its enclosure and decapitate him. Then it jumps over the wall and escapes

So far so good.

Chapter 2, we meet another shreddie (tm) who dies in a fun way as is the fate of all shreddies. In chapter 3 we finally meet some characters to start following. Three more zoo employees are sent to chase down the Cassowary (known as Cassie) before it kills again.

They don't really do a very good job of that. A couple of dozen people are torn to shreds on the page before they finally catch up. I think this is one of the only books where I thought there were too many shreddies and can he please just get on with the story. 

The biggest issue with the number of shreddies in this book is that the deaths aren't varied enough and it becomes repetitive.  I started a drinking game, having a drink every time he described Cassie's claws (especially the size and shape of her central claw) but had to give up when I ran out of whisky three chapters later and was too drunk to keep reading.

Some of the deaths are really badly done as well.  I know he was aiming for comedy, but it wasn't particularly funny. The human villains, in the shape of a small crew of mercenaries trying to catch and kill the bird, are so over the top that it's laughable in the wrong way. Sabata struggles to give his characters as many as one dimension each.  They're barely cardboard cutouts. This also affects the quality of the Shreddie kills. A Shreddie needs to feel like a fully fleshed character before they die.  Instead we have the most basic "look at this guy/girl- they're dead now" on repeat for probably more than half the book.  

The editor should be sacked for the number of errors that made it through to the final edition.  For example, whilst trying to escape from one of the human bad guys in the book, a girl tries to "severe" his arm with a machete instead of severing it. A few pages later the writer uses "Breathes" as a noun.  There are a few homophone switches flying around too.  I can normally let a couple of errors slide, but there are so many in this and they detract further from the already fairly poor writing style.

One thing I did like was the explanation of what was happening and why Cassie was now on a killing spree and apparently immortal. That was quite cleverly woven into the story.  If only his writing was as good as his ideas, this might have been a good book.  As it is, the only book in the series that I would recommend people read so far is the Roo. 

The money raised from the sales of these books is donated to animal charities so it's not a complete waste of money.