inciminci's Reviews > River of Teeth

First, a little background – apparently in the early twentieth century the US Congress considered hippopotamus ranching (in all seriousness) with hippos imported from Africa to the bayous of Louisiana as a solution for the national meat shortage and the growing ecological crisis. Again and again, the lengths at which humans will go to hold on to their commodities... But anyway. Sarah Gailey bases her Western alternate history River of Teeth on a universe where this consideration had been realized and we have cowboys sitting in a bar discussing who that black hippo outside belongs to which just ate the poor dog Petunia.

This universe is quirky and truly original, and the characters fun– Houndstooth, Archie and Hero, alongside with a couple of others form a group to avenge Houndstooth's burned down ranch (with all the hippos!) and hunt down those who are behind it. The hippos are characters of their own too! My only critique would be that the characters were all too binary, like the baddies were exaggeratedly so and you knew who's good and just right away, but I guess that is a Western thing.

This is the WBTM SFF book of the month January'24.