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The Dog Stars

3.92 of 5 stars 3.92 · rating details · 10,639 ratings · 2,262 reviews

THE ROAD - but with hope.

Hig, bereaved and traumatised after global disaster, has three things to live for - his dog Jasper, his aggressive but helpful neighbour, and his Cessna aeroplane. He's just about surviving, so long as he only takes his beloved plane for short journeys, and saves his remaining fuel.

But, just once, he picks up a message from another pilot, and event...more

Hardcover, 336 pages

Published August 7th 2012 by Headline (first published 2012)

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Mar 29, 2013 karen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: the-end

hey, amazon! you watchin' all these reviews now?? making sure they are all sunshiny five-star gushings that won't hurt the authors' feelings and cost you a sale?? making sure i don't drop any naughty words?

well, i can't five-star this book, so i guess i am writing this for nothing, and it might get deleted in the "every book is a winner" mentality of your book-worldview.

but i am gonna write it anyway, in the hopes that goodreads.com can still be the place it should be - where people can have opi...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Stephanie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, dystopia, post-apocalyptic

If this book didn't have a dog as one of the mian characters this would have been a three star for me.

Hig survives a super flu out break that kills off everyone he loves except for his dog Jasper and his airplane The Beast (which is also the name of an awesome roller coaster at Kings Island in Cincinnatti). He teams up with a man who is now a sociopath, but might not have always been before the shit hit the fan. They hold up at a small airport that they can protect with the help of a tower, a f...more If this book didn't have a dog as one of the mian characters this would have been a three star for me.

Hig survives a super flu out break that kills off everyone he loves except for his dog Jasper and his airplane The Beast (which is also the name of an awesome roller coaster at Kings Island in Cincinnatti). He teams up with a man who is now a sociopath, but might not have always been before the shit hit the fan. They hold up at a small airport that they can protect with the help of a tower, a few guns, good aim, a dog that growls at the sign of trouble and the Beast that Hig flys to scope the area for intruders. Because, you see, everyone turns mean and murderous.

This is a problem I am beginning to have with books like this (I know it's distopian), the assumption when something really bad happens, like a super flu, everybody who had moral values prior to the event turn into killing machines automatically. I don't believe that is the way it would go down in reality. When 9/11 happened everyone pulled together and were kinder to one another than they were on 9/10, at least for a little while. So I believe if a pandemic were to sweep the globe and kill almost everyone, human nature would bring people together probably out of shear loneliness more than anything. "oh hi there! Good god it's been a long time since I've seen another face! Too bad we can't talk and get to know each other because I have to kill you.". Bang! "Now that's a shame."

But that would'nt make for a very good story, and this story was about a bleak future for the human race. As far as that's concerned I think the author did a good job. I did have an issue with the part where after Hig finds a couple of other people and after he convinces them not to kill him and then plans to fly them out (view spoiler).......so that was kind of rediculus.

But the best part of the book is the relationship between Hig and his dog Jasper. Jasper is all that is left of his old life, a reminder of how life used to be before. He did a good job with that.

3.5

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Apr 18, 2013 Tim Karasko rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In the sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction the reader is left with a narrative mostly bleak, bare-boned, and animalistic; "happy endings" or "humanity" are typically cast aside for a much more gritty tale of survival, with the concept of "survival" used liberally as it seems more just dumb luck that the protagonist makes it to the end of his or her ordeal. In recent years Cormac McCarthy's The Road has been hailed as the best example of this form of fiction while in the past Neville Shute's On ...more In the sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction the reader is left with a narrative mostly bleak, bare-boned, and animalistic; "happy endings" or "humanity" are typically cast aside for a much more gritty tale of survival, with the concept of "survival" used liberally as it seems more just dumb luck that the protagonist makes it to the end of his or her ordeal. In recent years Cormac McCarthy's The Road has been hailed as the best example of this form of fiction while in the past Neville Shute's On the Beach was a previous contender. McCarthy's vison is of ultimate bleakness, ravaged existence, and hollow individuals stripped of humanity and left with desicated emotional ties to each other; whereas Shute's end of the world was filled with so much humanity it can be argued that it partially fails due to over sentimentality. Peter Heller's "The Dog Stars" falls somewhere in between the two previous titles.

Heller describes a world ruined by a devastating flu mutation and also struggling with the effects of global environmental collapse. Inside this future dystopian vision a meager number of individuals struggle to make the best of what is left. The mentality of the survivors is, of course, kill or be killed with little regard for any greater future for humanity. The main protagonist, Hig, seems to be the only one left with any sense of honor or some noble sense of human kindness. Hig spends most of his time defending his home, an airfield where he keeps his 1956 Cessna operating, with the help of his ally Bangley. Bangley is stereotypical survivalist of this brand of fiction; if it moves, shoot it, if that doesn't kill it, use a bigger gun. He serves his purpose as being the darker side of Hig; a Hig that would have lost his humanity completely. This is not to say that Hig is completely sentimental about the world he lives in because he can and does kill when he is left with no choice, but he struggles with the decision. Hig eventually goes chasing his greater hope for humanity, after a moment of great loss, in the form of a radio transmission he received three years previous while flying his plane. What Hig eventually finds in this "hero's journey" is what solidifies him in his world view.

While the overall story is compelling to read and at times even enjoyable it is not without some flaws. The most confusing aspect of Heller's narrative is his troubling use of disjointed grammar and syntax. Heller presents the story from Hig's POV, but never completely embraces a stream of conscious form of diction; he settles for some amalgamation of SoC and traditional third-person writing styles. Heller has also completely done away with the use of quotation marks to the point of disadvantage during conversation with multiple characters and when combined with inner thoughts. The text is written in short paragraphs, or even single lines, that are separated with a single space in between that adds nothing to the narrative and seems more a vain attempt to draw attention to specific moments; it reminded me of the habit of capitalizing each letter of a word in religious tracts to "help" the reader know that something is important. The almost haphazard use of the period to chop up sentences into smaller non-sentences is almost forgivable until you come to find out that Hig is or was a published author and wrote articles for various outdoor magazines. While we have to take Hig for his word about his past he does present the reader with a generally large vocabulary and some instances of appreciation for poetry in the form of memorized lines. The discord presented by his apparent education and "writing style" due to POV doesn't seem to lend itself to improve the work of fiction overall and becomes a needless form of failed artistic flair.

While not as detrimental to the story as the grammar and syntax its use of pop cultural references seems out of place. Hig states that his 1956 Cessna is eighty years old which roughly puts that date of the story in the year 2036 with nine years having passed since the population collapse. Even if cultural fads stopped abruptly in 2025 Hig's memories seem to revolve around the reader's present with a reference to James Cameron's 2009 movie Avatar and an obscure reference to the song "Feed Jake" by the Pirates of the Mississippi from 1991. The only future references the reader is presented with is a possible discovery of Amelia Earhart's remains and a cure or preventative measure in regards to HIV. It becomes unbelievable that Hig would only reference such past pop cultural references as he would have been alive during countless later ones. It seems a pointless use of "real life" instances to engage the reader whom is already engaged by the story if they are continuing to read it; the references just feel out of place and break the illusion of the narrative.

Characters can come off as being a little underdeveloped or inconsistent with no real explanation as to why. We are never exposed to the actual first meeting between Hig and Bangley other than being told that Hig moved into the airfield and Bangley arrived soon after with his truck full of guns. Bangley, as stated before, has a "shoot first" mentality that doesn't spare men, women or children. Why did Bangley not just shoot Hig when he first saw him then at the airfield; why did he come to an understanding with Hig in the first place and not just shoot him dead? Bangley never wants to talk to anyone to see if they could be an ally or not so their partnership seems a little disingenuous to the overall characterization. This characterization flaw is as troubling as the pop cultural references so they are really only a niggling issue to an extra-aware reader.

The Dog Stars, in the end, is a flawed but decent first novel. It is flawed in the same ways humanity is flawed in a post-apocalyptic world; the reader must search for something to find hope in and the characters at least engage you enough to allow you be concerned about their well-being. It would have been interesting to see how this book would have turned out if it was a later work of fiction by Heller when he would be more confidant in his writing style and maybe a little less clumsy with the text. I would still recommend this to those who like post-apocalyptic narratives because it does add something to the canon of this sub-genre, good or bad it warrants a read if it even slightly interests you.(less)

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Aug 23, 2012 Jana rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

8/14/12: I heard the author read from this last night. I'm SO glad I made the effort to do so as he was fantastic. A little scary to begin a book with such high expectations, but I really feel good about this one. Here goes...

8/18/12: Best book of 2012? Very likely it will be for me.

The writing is very unique and takes a few pages to get used to, but it becomes so personal and powerful that I inhabited the world of Hig and his beloved dog, Jasper. I don't think I fully returned to reality during...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Richard rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A riveting, powerful novel about a pilot living in a world filled with loss—and what he is willing to risk to rediscover, against all odds, connection, love, and grace.

Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains...more

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Sep 21, 2012 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm having trouble thinking of how to talk about this book without talking about the ending, which I think is a good thing, so I'll do my best to be spoiler-free while still addressing my main points about it. First, Hig and his dog are egregious self-inserts of the author and his dog, but somehow, this is one of the least obnoxious examples I've ever seen. Hig is both deeply flawed and deeply damaged by the events of nine years prior. In case you have any question that this may be the case, the...more I'm having trouble thinking of how to talk about this book without talking about the ending, which I think is a good thing, so I'll do my best to be spoiler-free while still addressing my main points about it. First, Hig and his dog are egregious self-inserts of the author and his dog, but somehow, this is one of the least obnoxious examples I've ever seen. Hig is both deeply flawed and deeply damaged by the events of nine years prior. In case you have any question that this may be the case, there is Bangley, who has a wildly different philosophy, constantly pushing Hig's failings right in his face.

I have to admit that I sometimes empathized more with Bangley, in that there are times when Hig is terrifyingly checked out in the middle of life and death situations, and wow, do I wish he wept less. That said, his struggle for meaning, especially in the empty world left by the flu is so universally human it's hard not to understand why he is so lost. I like that not everything is exactly what it seems. I have to say that while this book is not covering fresh territory, it does what it sets out to do pretty well, and I enjoyed it and was rarely annoyed, which is always refreshing. (Thank goodness for a book that doesn't spend all it's time telling me how massively smart the main characters are while they continue to do progressively dumber things...I'm looking at you Insurgent). The more I think about it, what I really liked was how stripped down it is. There is so little left for Hig to hold on to, and I like how the text reflects his bare existence.

I did want to add that I saw a beautiful copy of the hardcover at a book store today, and I have to wonder if I read it instead of listening to the audiobook if I would have rated this a 5. How much does the physical book and the actual words on the page contribute to the experience? Maybe I'll try it sometime.

09/21/12 Upgrading it to a 5. It's a month later, and I'm still thinking about this book. I like when a book has the ability to haunt you long after you've finished it.(less)

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Aug 31, 2012 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2012, e-books

5 Stars

I had originally only scored this post-apocalyptic read at 4 stars bought after having finished it two days ago, my fond recollections have changed my mind. This is a wonderful story and tale about a post-apocalyptic time when the world has been decimated due to an out of control flu and blood disease. Sure this has been done many times before, and it is a favorite genre of mine, but in this book The Dog Stars by Peter Heller, we are treated to a very unique point of view. You see Big Hig...more

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Jul 10, 2012 Newengland rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: finished-in-2012, contemporary

Note: This review is of an ARC. The book is set for an Aug. 7th release.

If you liked Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD, you're going to like Peter Heller's THE DOG STARS. If you did not like THE ROAD, you're still going to like THE DOG STARS.

Yes, Heller's book is reminiscent of McCarthy's, but you don't have to be a dystopia devotee to appreciate it. Why? Heller is a writer's writer with a talent for deft, descriptive strokes, for one, and his dystopian yin hasn't forgotten its utopian yang. Meaning: H...more Note: This review is of an ARC. The book is set for an Aug. 7th release.

If you liked Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD, you're going to like Peter Heller's THE DOG STARS. If you did not like THE ROAD, you're still going to like THE DOG STARS.

Yes, Heller's book is reminiscent of McCarthy's, but you don't have to be a dystopia devotee to appreciate it. Why? Heller is a writer's writer with a talent for deft, descriptive strokes, for one, and his dystopian yin hasn't forgotten its utopian yang. Meaning: Hope hasn't escaped the box for good, in the case of this rewarding book.

There's something here for everyone. At times, it is one creepy and violent thriller. But at other times, like when protagonist Hig takes to the mountain streams with his faithful dog, Jasper (yes, there's a dog book hidden in here -- at least for 100 pp. or so!), it reads like Hemingway. It's almost as if a public service announcer says, "We interrupt this dystopian nightmare to treat you to a Big Two-Hearted River moment." And then: "Now back to our regularly-scheduled apocalyptic mess." Then there is the turn the novel takes in its second half -- the addition of a romantic element, like an echo from Hig's burnt past. All this, yet Heller keeps it together and makes it fit.

To start, we have Hig and his ruthless partner-in-survival, the appropriately-named Bruce Bangley. With his old Cessna, Hig is able to tour the perimeter of the extensive grounds he, Bangley, and Jasper protect from survivors of (what else?) a killer flu pandemic. And what a pair. Where Bangley seems to kill with joy, Hig appears to kill under duress and despite his aversion to it. Both killers, though. By necessity. Only one has a poet's conscience.

Stylistically, the book has its quirks, too. You won't find any quotation marks, for one. Victims of the pandemic, I guess. And fragments (sentences, I'm talking) are as common as the frayed leftovers of civilization featured in the book. Still, the fragmented delivery fits Hig's personality nicely and gives Heller a chance to show his talents in creating voice.

The greatest treat of all, though, is the writing. Some of Heller's descriptions give you pause, they're so poetic. More than once, I reread a passage and said, "Nice. Very nice." Here's an excerpt that might give you a flavor:

"We were on the edge of a small basin above treeline and in the bottom were patches of old snow and a small lake recently cleared of ice... A lake like a gem set in a bezel of tufted tundra and rough scree, the water green with the luminous unapologetic green of a semiprecious stone but textured with the wind. Then it wasn't. The surface stilled and glassed off, polishing itself in an instant, the water reflecting the dark clouds that massed and poured against the ridges like something molten and it was suddenly very cold and the snowflakes began to touch the surface. Ringless, silent, vanishing. I let go the sled's bridle. I was fifty yards from the water. The snow heavier. A white scrim that darkened the air, that hastened the dusk the way a fire deepens the night. I stood transfixed. Too cold for bare hands but my hands were bare. The flakes struck in my eyelashes. They fell on my sleeves. Huge. Flowers and stars. They fell onto each other, held their shapes, became small piles of perfect asterisks and blooms tumbled together in their discrete geometries like children's blocks."

I don't know about you, but with writing like that, I don't even CARE if all Hades is breaking loose around the characters. At least they stop and smell the snowflakes now and again....
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Feb 10, 2013 Charlie Quimby rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I don't usually review books that have been reviewed to death. Better to find a worthy, unseen work and lift it up. But I'm making an exception for Peter Heller's The Dog Stars because I haven't seen a review yet that tapped into the thread it opened up for me.

Like Heller's main character Hig, flying over a flu-wasted Colorado looking for someone to connect with, I tried to find a review that spoke to this passage:

Still we are divided, there are cracks in the union. Over principle. His: Guilty u...more

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view all 5 comments

Charlie Quimby The way the event worked out—with questions submitted in advance and asked by moderators—I was able to ask my question, but it didn't surface in a ver...more
Mar 10, 2013 12:54pm

Kim Your review added another dimension I hadn't thought of. I do think though that Hig's character of representing the average man perspective vs Bangley...more
9 hours, 24 min ago

Feb 03, 2013 Dan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, borrowed, read-in-2013

It's strange. I heard a lot of good things about this book and picked it up from the library this week all without knowing what it was about, or that it has been compared to McCarthy's The Road or anything like that. I am not sure how that happened but I'm glad it did.

I have been searching for a book that is hard to put down. A book that kept me thinking about it when it was out of my hands. This book did exactly that.

There is a sort of terse style to the prose especially the dialogue that takes...more

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Dec 08, 2012 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, first-edition

Peter Heller's first novel is a quick and easy read. Comparisons with The Road, not all favorable, as noted by nearly all GR and professional reviewers, are obvious and accurate. I appreciated the loving and detailed descriptions of the various natural Colorado locations since I live in Denver and have been to many of the places in the novel. This is clearly Heller's gift. But not all is well when the reader looks at the novel's characters and constructed narrative.

If you are one of the few of u...more Peter Heller's first novel is a quick and easy read. Comparisons with The Road, not all favorable, as noted by nearly all GR and professional reviewers, are obvious and accurate. I appreciated the loving and detailed descriptions of the various natural Colorado locations since I live in Denver and have been to many of the places in the novel. This is clearly Heller's gift. But not all is well when the reader looks at the novel's characters and constructed narrative.

If you are one of the few of us who flies your own plane you will absolutely love this novel. The same goes for gun enthusiasts: it is a veritable manual on the uses of deadly firepower, and does not at all shirk from giving you all the gory details you may crave. Still, the plot dragged in the central section which takes place in a hidden canyon in western Colorado. Certain elements were improbable and overwrought, especially the hero's not-too-smart calculations and planning that went into an escape from that same canyon. In this instance, Heller was either deliberately portraying him as not the brightest star, which doesn't match the rest of his characterization, or the author simply missed the more obvious solution while writing it, one that his readers certainly will see.

The two older characters were male macho killing machines; the promise of their redemption which is required in all moral novels is why they are in the cast of four, otherwise there would be no point including them in this quite literate novel. I was sickened by too much disgusting detail on their tobacco chewing and spitting - was that really necessary? Isn't the indiscriminate killing of exactly everyone who comes their way - no negotiations, no questions asked - enough to demonstrate to the reader their role in the novel? Don't read this book while enjoying breakfast. Adding to this macho overload, the obligatory climactic moist sex scenes, let's just say, won't appeal to those of all orientations.

While Heller certainly has excellent literary writing skills, there weren't enough to fill 300-plus pages of this book. His deep appreciation of nature, fishing, flying, and dogs, is demonstrated here, and his ability to capture their essentials in a moving way is significant. But in The Road, Cormac McCarthy was able, in half the number of pages, to go straight to the meaning of humanity using only two quiet, ordinary characters living in a dark, fearsome, yet ironically beautiful post-apocalyptic world -- characters much more like ourselves than Heller's, and also more like we all hope would inhabit such a place.(less)

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Aug 22, 2012 Aaron Cance rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Just when I had falsely assumed that Cormac McCarthy had given us the last word on the post-apocalyptic novel, along comes Peter Heller with something fresh. Written in an unusual, abridged stream of consciousness style format, Heller's prose is lean and muscular. His protagonist, Hig, (or "Big Hig") is a sensitive guy who has survived a nameless pandemic that has wiped away the better part of the world's population. Despite the fact that he's daily living in a combat zone, tenaciously guarded b...more

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Dec 15, 2012 Natasha Hurley-Walker rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

When I was learning to fly, I too had fantasies that owning and flying a plane would make the post-Apocalypse that much safer and tolerable. But I didn't take that fantasy and turn it into an amazing first novel! Heller artfully balances the grit of day-to-day survival with poetic grieving for what was lost in the epidemic, and what will be lost as climate change takes its inevitable hold. An incredible story of the nuggets of good we do in amongst the sea of bad, on levels both personal (view s ...more

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Oct 26, 2012 Penny rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-coudn-t-finish

One star for this, only because I couldn't finish it. The writing style of this book drove me bat-shit crazy. In addition to no quotation marks AT ALL, here are a few examples of sentence composition.

"For the dog he said. Angry. Because I didn't do my job. To him."

"But."

"The way the landscape falls into place around the drainages, the capillaries and arteries of falling water: mountain slopes bunched and wrinkled, wringing themselves into furrows or couloir and creek, draw and chasm, the low pla...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Kwoomac rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, adventure, great-dog, reviewed, post-apocalypse, survival, of-course-i-cried

The writing is perfect and the story is painfully brilliant. I can't really do this book justice so JUST READ THE BOOK. The world has suffered some kind of major flu killing off most people. There are pockets of survivors. Some stake out a place to live and spend their time protecting it. Others are marauders who rape and pillage. The new code is kill or be killed.

So what would you do in this situation? Would you try to survive? Do whatever it takes? Would you give up? Would you try to find lik...more

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Feb 04, 2013 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: recent-reads, never-forget

i was quite taken with this book. hig, the narrator, is living outside of denver near an airport hangar with his dog jasper. this is the u.s., but nine years have passed since a flu epidemic has ravaged the u.s. population. hig's wife is one of the casualities. in addition to the flu outbreak, chaos has ensued and there are no longer laws in place. the laws to follow now are vigilante laws and each man defends what he has.

hig has a "friend", bangley, that helps defend their "home." bangley is e...more

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Aug 27, 2012 Samantha Allen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is incredible in so many ways. A rare gem that will make your heart pound like a thriller and make your hair stand on end from the prose. Also rare in the fact that it's written in present tense, yet flows effortlessly. Though I'm a fan of the present tense it has a number of limitations, one of which being that it feels unfamiliar, since most people are used to reading in the past tense. But I hardly noticed it wasn't in past tense. I got about fifty pages in before I realized. That's...more

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Aug 02, 2012 Jennifer Kilby rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads, favorites, i-own

I received this from first reads on goodreads about a week ago.

While it took me a couple chapters to really get into, once I was hooked it just flew by. I had a little trouble adjusting to the sentence structure and grammar, but eventually I felt that it started to enhance the narrator's tone.

I have always enjoyed a good dystopian novel, and this one strikes me as more realistic and down to earth than most. it has adventure without loosing emotion. Certain passages read more like poetry than a...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Barbara rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This one took a bit for me to latch onto, mostly due to the writing style. The best way I can describe it is to say that reading (or listening to; I did both the audio book and the Kindle book) this is the literary equivalent of riding in the car with my brake-happy mother-in-law. Ugh!

But, alas, I switched to the Kindle and was able to "read past" the stops and starts and fragmented sentences. The only advantage to the audio book was that the author changed his voice for the characters so I didn...more

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Apr 20, 2013 Jade Wang rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This post-apocalyptic one wasn't a big win for me, despite having everything going for it. I found it to be slow to compel (some might describe it as more atmospheric). Interesting take on living after the world has crumbled, but I'm not sure I understand what all the fuss is about.

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Apr 18, 2013 Robert rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm giving this five stars because I hope you read it too. It is short, thoughtful, action-packed. Tidy. Like Hemingway, maybe. Stripped down. Nicely avoids many post-apocalyptic cliches. Will human nature mean that after armageddon, he with the most firepower simply kills all others and lives? That makes me sad.

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Feb 27, 2013 Jen rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Eh. I had a hard time getting past the writing style. I guess the flu that eradicated 99% of the world's population also killed sentences, paragraphs, and complete thoughts. Considering that the narrator mentioned several times how much he enjoyed poetry and would have liked to have been an English teacher, I think that the writing style Heller chose was not particularly effective.

As far as the plot -- I found the bleak, miserable post-apocalyptic future painted by Heller to be completely point...more

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May 22, 2013 Scott rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

3.5 out of 5-since there is no half stars I went for 3, as I felt it was closer to a 3 than a 4 (reason behind this, is that you need to weigh up the level to which you will recommend a book to a friend, and I felt more that I would tell people about the book in conversation, but would not tell them to put it on their "must read" list)
First off, the criticisms from other readers about the writing style are spot on, it is quite hard to read at times, which does not really make sense as like other...more

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May 16, 2013 Sherree rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoyed this book. It started a little slow for me, but I find that some of the best books I've read go this route to really set up the stage, so that you're as familiar with what's going on as the author. The main character, "Hig," is 9 years into surviving after a sickness has taken out most of the now post-apocalyptic world. He has a dog, and one person in his entire world - Bangley - who he's not sure of at times, if he is friend or foe. Hig takes you into his life of survival, and...more

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May 08, 2013 Brandon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 03, 2013 Robyn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Okay, so I'm not a huge fan of post-apocalyptic fiction. I appreciated "The Road" as excellent writing but couldn't stand the imagery it left in my head. So I picked up "The Dog Stars" with some reservation and expected I'd be putting it back down quickly. I was wrong.

This is written from the perspective of Hig, a man who has survived the inevitable pandemic flu, as well as, a follow-up blood disease that has left the world very few survivors. Hig is a good man or at least is trying to be one i...more

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Apr 24, 2013 Ricky Orr rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I saw this book at the library as I was returning another and I thought it sounded interesting.

Hig, the main character in the story, survived a flu pandemic that killed off most of Earth's human population, including his entire family. He lived at an airport site called Erie located just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains with 1 other close neighbor named Bangley, his dog Jasper, and his vintage small airplane, the Beast. Hig would regularly sweep the perimeter of their homestead for...more

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Apr 24, 2013 Alix rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-other, makes-u-think, mcsweeneys, post-apocalyptic, owned

It can be - and sometimes it really tries too hard - poetic and insightful in its unique language and musings, but, in some parts, it awkwardly becomes an action movie and macho display of the author's interest in fishing, hunting, and guns. Since it deals with such a similar subject as "The Road," I don't know why Heller would choose to rip off McCarthy's writing style; Heller's isn't as refined and isn't nearly as consistent. The novel is an attempt to say something beautiful about the end of...more

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Apr 19, 2013 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: apocalyptastic

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Oh, to spend the post-apocalypse with a sensitive man! This is another “In many ways . . . but” books that I read a lot of lately. In the win column, this has a lot of nice apocalyptic detail. There’s just enough focus on the horror of flu that killed everyone & an abundant supply of sly, spooky detail about the woes that await us if we live through the end of the world. I mean, that guy with the necklace of “shriveled leather pieces,” good grief, I can’t even. It was nice to read a book set...more Oh, to spend the post-apocalypse with a sensitive man! This is another “In many ways . . . but” books that I read a lot of lately. In the win column, this has a lot of nice apocalyptic detail. There’s just enough focus on the horror of flu that killed everyone & an abundant supply of sly, spooky detail about the woes that await us if we live through the end of the world. I mean, that guy with the necklace of “shriveled leather pieces,” good grief, I can’t even. It was nice to read a book set in my home state, although I dispute that Ponderosa pines smell like vanilla. The choppy writing style grew on me as the book went on, even as I got angrier at its lack of quotation marks & the whole airport in Grand Junction setup was legitimately scary. Plus, I find that I have an affinity for hilarious sex scenes which aren’t meant as such, so when Cima & Hig have an encounter which is unconsummated due to her thinking about her dead husband which gets Hig thinking about her dead husband & makes him feel like he’s been “robbed of all legitimacy as a lover . . . stripped [of] my license to love or even express affection . . . awful,” and then Cima turns to Hig during the gravitas of this failed sex moment & says, “Will you give me oral pleasure?” and he thinks, “She said it in a French accent & I knew she was referencing that old classic, Pulp Fiction,” honestly – as a reader, what am I supposed to do here but just laugh & laugh & laugh? I thank you for that, Peter Heller.

But just as Hig has lamentations, so do I. There are a lot of things I didn’t care for about this. The flu killed most of the people yet left behind such an oddly specific set of animals (that Hig kept naming, which pulled me right out of the story, thinking, How on earth would Hig know if elephants & baboons were dead or alive?), but the blood sickness that stuck it to the survivors was never adequately explained. There’s a family of Mennonites that Hig visits two times that seem like filler. After the setup of their relationship at the beginning of the book, I didn’t buy his eventual warm feelings for Bangley anymore than I bought Bangley’s feelings for him, or for Cima & Pops. There are some inexplicable references to Arabs coming to kill everyone early in the book & then some jets, which they assume contain said Arabs, overfly their group at the very end, which I just found confusing. But good luck with your garden this year, guys, because I know how hard it can be to try to keep veggies alive in Denver.
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Apr 12, 2013 Doug M. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A post-apocalyptic tale (though not really sci-fi) told through the eyes of Hig: a Cessna pilot (and an avid outdoorsman—fly-fishing mainly, but some hunting, too) who, with his dog Jasper as co-pilot, buzzes around a small portion of what would have been Colorado nine years previously (anything further back than nine years is referred to simply as "before") just trying to figure out how to * be * under the new rules/situation. Not utterly bleak, as some post-apoc tends to be, but more introspect...more

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About Peter Heller

Peter Heller holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in both fiction and poetry. An award-winning adventure writer and longtime contributor to NPR, Heller is a contributing editor at Outside magazine, Men’s Journal, and National Geographic Adventure, and a regular contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek. He is also the author of several nonfiction books, including Kook, The Whale Warriors, and...more

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Books by Peter Heller

Kook: What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave

The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals

Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River

In This Corner . . . !: Forty-two World Champions Tell Their Stories

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“Grief is an element. It has its own cycle like the carbon cycle, the nitrogen. It never diminished not ever. It passes in and out of everything.” — 25 people liked it

“Funny how you can live your whole life waiting and not know it... Waiting for your real life to begin. Maybe the most real thing the end. To realize when it's too late. I know now that I loved him more than anything on earth or off of it.” — 22 people liked it

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