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River of Teeth
Scritto da Sarah Gailey
Narrato da Peter Berkrot
Azioni libro
Inizia ad ascoltareDescrizione
In the early twentieth century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true.
Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two.
This was a terrible plan.
Contained within this volume is an 1890s America that might have been: a bayou overrun by feral hippos and mercenary hippo wranglers from around the globe. It is the story of Winslow Houndstooth and his crew. It is the story of their fortunes. It is the story of his revenge.
Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two.
This was a terrible plan.
Contained within this volume is an 1890s America that might have been: a bayou overrun by feral hippos and mercenary hippo wranglers from around the globe. It is the story of Winslow Houndstooth and his crew. It is the story of their fortunes. It is the story of his revenge.
Azioni libro
Inizia ad ascoltareInformazioni sul libro
River of Teeth
Scritto da Sarah Gailey
Narrato da Peter Berkrot
Descrizione
In the early twentieth century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true.
Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two.
This was a terrible plan.
Contained within this volume is an 1890s America that might have been: a bayou overrun by feral hippos and mercenary hippo wranglers from around the globe. It is the story of Winslow Houndstooth and his crew. It is the story of their fortunes. It is the story of his revenge.
Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two.
This was a terrible plan.
Contained within this volume is an 1890s America that might have been: a bayou overrun by feral hippos and mercenary hippo wranglers from around the globe. It is the story of Winslow Houndstooth and his crew. It is the story of their fortunes. It is the story of his revenge.
Informazioni sull'autore
SG![]()
Recensioni
2018 Hugo Awards Best Novella Nominee
It was fun and light and I enjoyed it for that. Also for the hippos. If that's what you're looking for, this is your novella. But if you're looking for substance don't look here. As others have said, there's a lot of telling me characters have chemistry of any kind with each other but not a lot of showing, possibly because this story was too big to be a novella. (Yes, I would have read an entire novel about hippo cowboys, if it was done well.)
It was fun and light and I enjoyed it for that. Also for the hippos. If that's what you're looking for, this is your novella. But if you're looking for substance don't look here. As others have said, there's a lot of telling me characters have chemistry of any kind with each other but not a lot of showing, possibly because this story was too big to be a novella. (Yes, I would have read an entire novel about hippo cowboys, if it was done well.)
There's a running joke in my office about hippos. And how the hippos in South America should or should not be there. When this book was mentioned in a forum I was browsing, I decided to read it. Mostly as a joke, but it had an interesting premise.Unfortunately, I found it a difficult read. It has a fun premise, a great world, and the hippos are awesome. The team is fun and well put together. But, I found it difficult to keep what was happening straight. I also didn't like the characters vulnerabilities. It is suppose to be a book about a crack mercenary team in western type book - nobody should be falling in love, or discussing of feelings. It detracted from the book and wouldn't have made sense in this setting.Overall, its a fun read, but could have been written better. Also, Man eating hippos. That is all.
River of Teeth is a fantastic alternative history book that was a joy to read and so unique. What was a blast is that she used a bit of real history as a basis! Only our crazy government would think of bringing hippos over to America! It didn't go through in real life but in this book it is a fun ride! Great story!
This was a novella, and rarely do I want a book to be longer, but I think this story could have benefited from fleshing out a bit. It's set in an alternate Southern United States where hippos have been imported as meat animals and gone feral along the Mississippi River. So it's like a Western, but set in the bayou on hippos. The characters were interesting, but we didn't see them develop--we didn't see them fall in love, they just were in love; we didn't see why they betrayed one another, they just did. I also would have liked to see more world-building. Promising, but falls a little short.
I loved this book! The alternate-history setting is a lot of fun. The author does an amazing job with the distinctive voices of our protagonists. The story is exciting and fast-paced. And it's stuffed full of awesome LGBTQ characters.
This was really fun! I really enjoyed the unique concept - cowboys and feral hippos and an operation, who wouldn't like it? I really enjoyed how much of the characters we got to see and yet the plot was still fun, fast paced, and didn't suffer. Will definitely be reading the next one.
Super weird. super good. I didn’t expect so much of what happened in this book.
Hippo Cowboys! A badass team! A heist! Queer characters and a touching romance! Everything about this book is great.
"The story is inspired by Louisiana Congressman Robert F. Broussard's 1910 plan to import hippopotamuses to America, with the intent that they would eat invasive water hyacinth and serve as meat animals." What was an very obscure plan, the story that comes from it is creative. The narrator does the novel justice with the various accents all throughout it.
That was so much fun - a thoroughly enjoyable listen
An alt-history novella with quite a twist. What if the US government decided to import hippopotamuses to farm for meat production back in the late 1800's? What could possibly go wrong? This is a quick, weird read and, wow, we can certainly use more of those! A diverse speculative Western by a creative, cool writer.
A fun romp through an alternate history in which the swampier parts of the US were given over to hippo rearing (which was apparently a serious proposal around the end of the 19th Century). By the end the characters felt a little flat and the plot a bit too absurd.
What a fun story. The characters were an absolute delight.
I wanted to like this - an alternate timeline story based in a tidbit of actual history sounded enticing. Ultimately however, I felt this potentially great story was ruined by the author's apparent need to dabble in the latest popular sexual propoganda to such a degree to be distracting. Too bad.
River of Teeth is more awesomeness than I thought could ever be packed into one novella. This little book is sheer fun!I’ve been wanting to read this novella ever since I saw Sarah Gailey’s tweets about the history behind it. Basically, in 1909, America was facing two problems: a meat shortage and invasive plants in the Mississippi. Well, one U.S. congressman had a bright idea. We could import hippos to live in the Mississippi. They’d eat the invasive plants and provide a source of meat. Brilliant, right? The rest of Congress certainly thought so. The motion failed by only one vote. Presumably because someone finally pointed out that hippos are the most dangerous African mega-fauna. But if the vote had gone another way, what would America have been like? River of Teeth is a story of the American Hippo, although set earlier than the real world history that inspired it.Enter Winslow Houndstooth, a former hippo rancher who is planning what’s most definitely not a caper. It’s an operation, all perfectly legal and above board! He’s been hired to move a bunch of feral hippos from damned off basin in the Mississippi out into coast, to open the river back up to shipping traffic. What the coast guard will think of this plan, no one’s bothered asking. Anyway, he’s got plans for how to transport these hippos in one fell swoop… and get some revenge in the process. But to carry off his plan, he needs a crew.That’s right, this is a heist story! A hippo heist. And oh my goodness is the heist crew wonderful. They’re a bisexual hippo cowboy, a nonbinary demolitions expert, a French conwoman, and a pregnant assassin. Anyone of those character descriptions is someone I’d love to read about. Put them all together and this book practically explodes awesomeness and queer goodness. God, this book made me so happy.I could have rushed through the entire novella in one sitting, but I parceled it out to savor it. Part of me wishes it was longer — I think the story could have benefited from being more in depth. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for shorter stories. Plus, Sarah Gailey’s writing a sequel! You can bet that I’ll be reading it.In short, everything I’ve read by Sarah Gailey has been delightful, and River of Teeth is no exception. I’d heartily recommend it.Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
This is a sort of Wild West caper set in an alternate history where American rivers are populated by hippos. It has a zany and diverse cast of characters. In a way, the concept is more entertaining than the execution. Or, put another way, it's a silly concept, and the author does some fun stuff with it, but I'm not really sure that it's worth even a novella - once you get the idea, the story itself is somewhat confusing. Still, it's a fun and fast read.
This was a highly-anticipated read for me, because it's the kind of alt-history I love: it takes real could-haves and makes them feel real. In this case, it's an America that imported hippos as a food source, resulting in a late-19th century bayou with hippo "cowboys" and feral hippos that are as nasty as vampires or zombies or any other insidious bad-guys of spec fiction. The biggest negative I have is that it is only a novella, and half of the content (quite literally, going by the percentage on the ebook) consisted of the party members coming together. That made the pacing feel a bit off to me, and left me frustrated at the suddenness of the end. I do know there is another novella in the series, so that's something to look forward to!
Even for a pulp adventure, this story was really thin. One character was written incredibly poorly. I understand that the author was going for a gender fluid character, but instead created a literary void on the page. I look forward to this author developing more substantial characters to go along with her fun set dressing.
An alternate history set in the 1800’s where the U.S. government actually flowed through on their idea of transplanting hippos to the Louisiana bayou and a man named Winslow pulls together a team for a heist set in the middle of all of this. I LOVED the premise of this novella, and I loved the setting, I feel the author did an amazing job of world building in such a short book. The set up of the culture around the hippos felt believable. Where I started to have problems was with the characters, and how they and the world interacted with each other. Some felt grounded where others felt too over the top and clichéd that I had a hard time buying them being so accepted in the 1800’s Deep South and I found that kept pulling me out of the story.The plot was interesting enough, though I felt the author tried to cram a bit too much into the first book, but I also find that to be a problem with a lot of novellas. You just run out of pages.Overall, the story started strong, has a unique and interesting premise and background but I ended up finding the characters to annoying and not engaging enough for me. I might try to read the next two books, but I really didn’t feel this story enough to put much effort into that. That said, I would still recommend giving this book a try, if only for the hippos.
I really, really, really wanted to like this.
And I really, really, really did not.
Okay. I did like the diversity of the cast. I liked that there were more than one woman, a nonbinary love interest, a queer MC. That was good. Especially the normalization of the nonbinary character's gender and pronouns. No big deal. No big reveal. It was good. I liked that.
I didn't like anything else.
First of all: structurally the story is not good. I recently read another novella of about the same length yet it felt so much more COMPLETE than this book, so much realer, more substantial, because the author spent time building up her characters so you cared about them. This book? The characters are barely given a few pages of build-up and the relationships between them are like, neither show or tell. You don't have enough time or reasons to care about them. When things happen to them you barely blink because you don't know them well enough to be emotionally invested. Twist pack zero punch because everything just happens, without a moment to understand why or how.
Second: this is an alternate history of the US in the 19th century, set in the American South with a goddamn TIMELINE in the backmatter and slavery is not mentioned ONCE. Was there a Civil War? Is slavery legal? Who knows??? While a character is portrayed as being black, there's literally not a single mention of slavery. In the timeline it mentions Ulysses Grant being president at some point so maybe there was a Civil War? Maybe slavery was ended? Maybe???? Like I'm not expecting a detailed history in this book about hippos but if you're going to set something in any version of the 19th century American South without mentioning slavery at all than you're doing something wrong. I'm sorry. Slavery built the South and the neat idea of introducing hippos doesn't change that.
I really wish I could have liked this more but I gotta say, it failed on a whole lot of levels for me :/
And I really, really, really did not.
Okay. I did like the diversity of the cast. I liked that there were more than one woman, a nonbinary love interest, a queer MC. That was good. Especially the normalization of the nonbinary character's gender and pronouns. No big deal. No big reveal. It was good. I liked that.
I didn't like anything else.
First of all: structurally the story is not good. I recently read another novella of about the same length yet it felt so much more COMPLETE than this book, so much realer, more substantial, because the author spent time building up her characters so you cared about them. This book? The characters are barely given a few pages of build-up and the relationships between them are like, neither show or tell. You don't have enough time or reasons to care about them. When things happen to them you barely blink because you don't know them well enough to be emotionally invested. Twist pack zero punch because everything just happens, without a moment to understand why or how.
Second: this is an alternate history of the US in the 19th century, set in the American South with a goddamn TIMELINE in the backmatter and slavery is not mentioned ONCE. Was there a Civil War? Is slavery legal? Who knows??? While a character is portrayed as being black, there's literally not a single mention of slavery. In the timeline it mentions Ulysses Grant being president at some point so maybe there was a Civil War? Maybe slavery was ended? Maybe???? Like I'm not expecting a detailed history in this book about hippos but if you're going to set something in any version of the 19th century American South without mentioning slavery at all than you're doing something wrong. I'm sorry. Slavery built the South and the neat idea of introducing hippos doesn't change that.
I really wish I could have liked this more but I gotta say, it failed on a whole lot of levels for me :/
In 1909, Robert F. Broussard, a congressman from Louisiana introduced a bill for $250,000 in funding to deal with the invasive Water Hyacinth that was clogging the Louisiana waterways by introducing hippos into the wild to eat them. True story. The bill failed to pass but Sarah Gailey’s novella portrays a world where the opposite happened and the hippopotami have quickly become a bigger problem than the Water Hyacinth ever thought to be. Winslow Remington Houndstooth was a former hippo rancher who lost his ranch after it was razed to the ground by an enemy. He’s been hired by the government to herd the feral hippo population into the Gulf because they’re currently wreaking havoc on the trading route potential the Harriet area boasts. He puts together a crew of hippo-riding “hoppers” consisting of Regina “Archie” Archambault, a con artist, Cal Hotchkiss, a dangerous sharpshooter, Hero Schackleby, a demolition expert, and contract killer Adelia Reyes. Nothing good can come of a group of such people.“It’s not a caper,” Houndstooth replied, sounding irritated. “It’s an operation. All aboveboard.”This novella was honestly a ton of fun. It was very much an Oceans 11 style caper, excuse me, operation, with revenge, murder, and treachery aplenty. I don’t care what kind of genre you typically read, hearing that a book is about man-eating hippos should entice just about anyone. The lively team is quickly assembled and the mission plan is immediately put into effect which definitely limited the time spent on these interesting people but Sarah Gailey still did a fantastic job in bringing their personalities to life. The mission itself is full of twists and turns and a level of excitement that only made me want more of everything in terms of length and detail that could have been possible with this story. The narrator Peter Berkrot was a pleasure to listen to despite the various accents and French ladies he was forced to attempt. ‘A’ for effort and for making this spirited story that much more fun to listen to.“I regret nothing: it was worth it for the hats alone.”
I can't quite grok how a swap forms downstream from a dam, but this is meant to be a mind bending swamp romp. Hard to see how the associations essential to the story formed.
I haven’t been this unsettled by an alt history since Blades of Winter. That will feel like an exaggeration to anyone not living in near cattle country.
Here we glimpse an America that embraced the hippopotamus as it’s meat animal.
The hippo.
The most dangerous animal in Africa.
An aggressive, territorial 3300lb animal than can explode out of the water and run at 19 mph.
In southern American waterways.
Dear God I don’t think I ever got over it, distracting me to the point where the plot made little sense and was secondary to the world building. I didn’t like or care for the characters. The hippos were of more interest.
And yes this almost happened: American Hippopotamus
The audiobook was well read. I find the story hard to rate as it has original and imaginative staying power but I didn’t like it.
Here we glimpse an America that embraced the hippopotamus as it’s meat animal.
The hippo.
The most dangerous animal in Africa.
An aggressive, territorial 3300lb animal than can explode out of the water and run at 19 mph.
In southern American waterways.
Dear God I don’t think I ever got over it, distracting me to the point where the plot made little sense and was secondary to the world building. I didn’t like or care for the characters. The hippos were of more interest.
And yes this almost happened: American Hippopotamus
The audiobook was well read. I find the story hard to rate as it has original and imaginative staying power but I didn’t like it.
**This book was reviewed for Macmillan-Tor/ Forge via NetgalleyRiver of Teeth hits you with the two-ton force of a raging bull hippo, dragging you down into the depths of well-wrought words. This is an alternate earth story of what life might have been like if the US went ahead with plans to import hippos to the marshlands of the south as a food source. This plan really was considered once, but discarded for the simple fact that hippos are damn dangerous. Temperamental and vicious, they are prone to attacking without provocation. Even the towering elephant and the short-sighted rhino, while dangerous in their own right, are not as ferocious. Winslow Houndstooth is a man with a singular goal- revenge. Revenge against the ones responsible for his ranch burning, slaughtering his hundred plus hippos. He's not a hero… but he could be. Winslow is a mercenary of sorts now, and his most recent client is the US government. He’s to clear an area of marshland known as the Harriet of its feral hippo population. To do this, Winslow needs a team with very specialised skills. There's Hero, the demolitions expert, sharpshooter Calhoun, Adelia, the assassin, skilled in knife play, and grifter Archie, who is skilled in the use of a ball-n-chain weapon she calls a meteor hammer. Not everyone in this group is on the best of terms, and one can be dangerous just for the hells of it, but they've agreed to work together for a nice payout. Of course, nothing is ever simple. Disaster strikes early on with an attack by a rogue feral before they've even reached the Harriet. Then there’s the little matter of river casino owner Travers who operates out of the Harriet and uses the ferals as a deterrent to cheaters or those who cause other problems. Despite his oily slick facade of cooperation, Travers has no intention of allowing anything to happen to his ferals. Betrayal from within shatters the company, leaving more than one dead or dying, and their mission more broken than they ever could imagine.This was storyweaving at it's finest. It's got it all- witty dialogue, non-mushy romance, wonderful worldbuilding, and women who are kick-ass in their own right. With these diverse characters, and the initial nature of the caper (I mean, the operation), I was strongly reminded of the show Leverage. I could easily imagine our mastermind, Winslow, uttering Nate’s signature phrase “Let's go steal a …..”, filling in marsh. But never has such terrible betrayal fractured the trust between the Leverage team. I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that part of the personality and character traits woven into the story included diverse sexual orientation as well. It is neatly done, being just another subtle element, but it was unique in my reading experience. In other books (thus far) that I've read, if that diversity is there, you are bludgeoned with it, as if to force acknowledgement. Here, it is as it should be, in both stories, and in real-life, a blended aspect that simple just is, with no need for justification. There's a person who is bi, a person who seems to favour only their own gender, a person who has a non-binary orientation. The latter was handled very well. I devoured River of Teeth in a day, and I'm ready for Taste of Marrow!?????+