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Peter Heller

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The Dog Stars Kindle Edition

by Peter Heller (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

9,182 ratings

Editors' pick Best Literature & Fiction

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of The River: In this "end-of-the-world novel more like a rapturous beginning" (San Francisco Chronicle), Hig somehow survived the flu pandemic that killed everyone he knows. His gripping story is "an ode to friendship between two men...the strong bond between a human and a dog, and a reminder of what is worth living for" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).

Hig's wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley.

But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, August 2012: Adventure writer Peter Heller's The Dog Stars is a first novel set in Colorado after a superflu has culled most of humanity. A man named Hig lives in a former airport community--McMansions built along the edge of a runway--which he shares with his 1956 Cessna, his dog, and a slightly untrustworthy survivalist. Hig spends his days flying the perimeter, looking out for intruders and thinking about the things he's lost: his deceased wife, the nearly extinct trout he loved to fish. When a distant beacon sparks in him the realization that something better might be out there, it's only a matter of time before he goes searching. Poetic, thoughtful, and transformative, this novel is a rare combination of literary and highly readable. --Chris Schluep

Amazon Exclusive: Author Peter Heller on the Star of The Dog Stars

The inspiration for Jasper, a Blue Heeler mix, who is an integral part of this novel.

Our Hero, Hig, lives at a little country airstrip which he shares with his beloved blue heeler Jasper, and a mean gun nut named Bangley. It's nine years after a super-flu has killed 99.7% of the people on the planet. Hig sleeps out under the open sky at night with Jasper. He does it because he loves to see the stars, and because it's safer: if marauders come he won't be trapped in one of the nearby houses.

He used to have a book of the stars, but now he doesn't, so when he's lying out at night he makes up constellations. Mostly they are animals, and he makes one for his best friend Jasper. The Dog Stars. It's Hig's way of reinventing the lost world, and keeping in touch with the things he loves.

Jasper, to me, is the star of the book. He is fiercely loyal, and he gives Hig something to live for when there is not much else to hold on to.

Review

A San Francisco Chronicle and Atlantic Monthly Best Book of the Year

“Extraordinary. . . . One of those books that makes you happy for literature.” —Junot Díaz, The Wall Street Journal

“This end-of-the-world novel [is] more like a rapturous beginning. . . . Remarkable.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“For all those who thought Cormac McCarthy’s The Road the last word on the post-apocalyptic world—think again. . . . Make time and space for this savage, tender, brilliant book.” —Glen Duncan, author of The Last Werewolf

“Heart-wrenching and richly written. . . . The Dog Stars is a love story, but not just in the typical sense. It’s an ode to friendship between two men, a story of the strong bond between a human and a dog, and a reminder of what is worth living for.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“A dreamy, postapocalyptic love letter to things of beauty, big and small.” –Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl

"Heartbreaking" —The Seattle Times

“A brilliant success.” —The New Yorker

“Beautifully written and morally challenging” –The Atlantic Monthly

“A book that rests easily on shelves with Dean Koontz, Jack London or Hemingway." —The Missourian

"Dark, poetic, and funny." —Jennifer Reese, NPR

“Terrific. . . . Recalling the bleakness of Cormac McCarthy and the trout-praising beauty of David James Duncan, The Dog Stars makes a compelling case that the wild world will survive the apocalypse just fine; it’s the humans who will have the heavy lifting.” —Outside

“A post-apocalyptic adventure novel with the soul of haiku.” —The Columbus Dispatch

“An elegy for a lost world turns suddenly into a paean to new possibilities. In The Dog Stars, Peter Heller serves up an insightful account of physical, mental, and spiritual survival unfolded in dramatic and often lyrical prose.” —The Boston Globe

“Take the sensibility of Hemingway. Or James Dickey. Place it in a world where a flu mutation has wiped out ninety-nine percent of the population. Add in a heartbroken man with a fishing rod, some guns, a small plane. Don’t forget the dog. Now imagine this man retains more hope than might be wise in such a battered and brutal time. More trust. More hunger for love—more capacity for it, too. That’s what Peter Heller has given us in his beautifully written first novel.” —Scott Smith, author of A Simple Plan and The Ruins

“With its evocative descriptions of hunting, fishing, and flying, [The Dog Stars], perhaps the world’s most poetic survival guide, reads as if Billy Collins had novelized one of George Romero’s zombie flicks.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)

“The Dog Stars can feel less like a 21st-century apocalypse and more like a 19th-century frontier narrative (albeit one in which many, many species have become extinct). There are echoes of Grizzly Adams or Jeremiah Johnson in scenes where Heller lingers on the details of how the water in a flowing stream changes color as the sun moves across the sky.” —The Dallas Morning News

“Full of action and hope…. One you’ll not soon forget.” — The Oklahoman

“A heavenly book, a stellar achievement by a debut novelist that manages to combine sparkling prose with truly memorable, shining, characters.” —The New York Journal of Books

“Gruff, tormented and inspirational, Heller has the astonishing ability to make you laugh, cringe and feel ridiculously vulnerable throughout the novel that will have you rereading certain passages with a hard lump in the pit of your stomach. One of the most powerful reads in years.” —Playboy

“The Dog Stars is a wholly compelling and deeply engaging debut.” —Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted

“Beautiful, haunting and hopeful. . . . Makes your breath catch and your heart ache.” —Aspen Daily News

“At times funny, at times thrilling, at times simply heartbreaking and always rich with a love of nature, The Dog Stars finds a peculiar poetry in deciding that there’s really no such thing as the end of the world—just a series of decisions about how we live in whatever world we’ve got.” —Salt Lake City Weekly

“What separates Heller’s book from other End of Days stories is that it doesn’t rely on the thematic fail-safes to tell the story—The Dog Stars is quite simply the story of what it’s like to be alonet.” —The Stranger

“Proves a truth we know from our everyday nonfictional lives: Even when it seems like all the humans in the world are only out for themselves, there are always those few who prove you absolutely wrong—in the most surprising of ways.” —Oprah.com

“Heller has created a heartbreakingly moving love story. . . . It’s an ode to what we’ve lost so far, and how we risk losing everything.” —Cincinnati City Beat

“A stunning, hope-riddled end-of-the-world story. . . . Bound to become a classic.” —Flavorwire

“Heller’s writing gives you a heartbreaking jolt, like a sudden wakening from a dream.” —The Seattle Times

“Heller is a masterful storyteller and The Dog Stars is a beautiful tribute to the resilience of nature and the relentless human drive to find meaning and deep connections with life and the living.” —Julianna Baggott, author of Pure

“Terrific . . . With echoes of Moby Dick, The Dog Stars . . . brings Melville’s broad, contemplative exploration of good and evil to his story.” —Shelf Awareness

“Heller’s surprising and irresistible blend of suspense, romance, social insight, and humor creates a cunning form of cognitive dissonance neatly pegged by Hig as an ‘apocalyptic parody of Norman Rockwell’—a novel, that is, of spiky pleasure and signal resonance.” —Booklist (starred)

About the Author

PETER HELLER is the best-selling author of three novels, including The Painter and Celine. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in both fiction and poetry. An award-winning adventure writer and a 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 Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River. He lives in Denver, Colorado.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

i

I keep the Beast running, I keep the 100 low lead on tap, I foresee attacks. I am young enough, I am old enough. I used to love to fish for trout more than almost anything.

My name is Hig, one name. Big Hig if you need another.

If I ever woke up crying in the middle of a dream, and I’m not saying I did, it’s because the trout are gone every one. Brookies, rainbows, browns, cutthroats, cutbows, every one.

The tiger left, the elephant, the apes, the baboon, the cheetah. The titmouse, the frigate bird, the pelican (gray), the whale (gray), the collared dove. Sad but. Didn’t cry until the last trout swam upriver looking for maybe cooler water.

Melissa, my wife, was an old hippy. Not that old. She looked good. In this story she might have been Eve, but I’m not Adam. I am more like Cain. They didn’t have a brother like me.

Did you ever read the Bible? I mean sit down and read it like it was a book? Check out Lamentations. That’s where we’re at, pretty much. Pretty much lamenting. Pretty much pouring our hearts out like water.

They said at the end it would get colder after it gets warmer. Way colder. Still waiting. She’s a surprise this old earth, one big surprise after another since before she separated from the moon who circles and circles like the mate of a shot goose.

No more geese. A few. Last October I heard the old bleating after dusk and saw them, five against the cold bloodwashed blue over the ridge. Five all fall, I think, next April none.

I hand pump the 100 low lead aviation gas out of the old airport tank when the sun is not shining, and I have the truck too that was making the fuel delivery. More fuel than the Beast can burn in my lifetime if I keep my sorties local, which I plan to, I have to. She’s a small plane, a 1956 Cessna 182, really a beaut. Cream and blue. I’m figuring I’m dead before the Beast gives up the final ghost. I will buy the farm. Eighty acres of bottomland hay and corn in a country where there is still a cold stream coming out of the purple mountains full of brookies and cuts.

Before that I will make my roundtrips. Out and back.

*

I have a neighbor. One. Just us at a small country airport a few miles from the mountains. A training field where they built a bunch of houses for people who couldn’t sleep without their little planes, the way golfers live on a golf course. Bangley is the name on the registration of his old truck, which doesn’t run anymore. Bruce Bangley. I fished it out of the glove box looking for a tire pressure gauge I could take with me in the Beast. A Wheat Ridge address. I don’t call him that, though, what’s the point, there’s only two of us. Only us for at least a radius of eight miles, which is the distance of open prairie to the first juniper woods on the skirt of the mountain. I just say, Hey. Above the juniper is oak brush then black timber. Well, brown. Beetle killed and droughted. A lot of it standing dead now, just swaying like a thousand skeletons, sighing like a thousand ghosts, but not all. There are patches of green woods, and I am their biggest fan. I root for them out here on the plain. Go Go Go Grow Grow Grow! That’s our fight song. I yell it out the window as I fly low over. The green patches are spreading year by year. Life is tenacious if you give it one little bit of encouragement. I could swear they hear me. They wave back, wave their feathery arms back and forth down low by their sides, they remind me of women in kimonos. Tiny steps or no steps, wave wave hands at your sides.

I go up there on foot when I can. To the greener woods. Funny to say that: not like I have to clear my calendar. I go up to breathe. The different air. It’s dangerous, it’s an adrenalin rush I could do without. I have seen elk sign. Not so old. If there are still elk. Bangley says no way. Way, but. Never seen one. Seen plenty deer. I bring the .308 and I shoot a doe and I drag her back in the hull of a kayak which I sawed the deck off so it’s a sled. My green sled. The deer just stayed on with the rabbits and the rats. The cheat grass stayed on, I guess that’s enough.

Before I go up there I fly it twice. One day, one night with the goggles. The goggles are pretty good at seeing down through trees if the trees aren’t too heavy. People make pulsing green shadows, even asleep. Better than not checking. Then I make a loop south and east, come back in from the north. Thirty miles out, at least a day for a traveler. That’s all open, all plains, sage and grass and rabbit brush and the old farms. The brown circles of fields like the footprint of a crutch fading into the prairie. Hedgerows and windbreaks, half the trees broken, blown over, a few still green by a seep or along a creek. Then I tell Bangley.

I cover the eight miles dragging the empty sled in two hours, then I am in cover. I can still move. It’s a long way back with a deer, though. Over open country. Bangley covers me from halfway out. We still have the handsets and they still recharge with the panels. Japanese built, good thing. Bangley has a .408 CheyTac sniper rifle set up on a platform he built. A rangefinder. My luck. A gun nut. A really mean gun nut. He says he can pot a man from a mile off. He has done. I’ve seen it more than once. Last summer he shot a girl who was chasing me across the open plain. A young girl, a scarecrow. I heard the shot, stopped, left the sled, went back. She was thrown back over a rock, a hole where her waist should have been, just about torn in half. Her chest was heaving, panting, her head twisted to the side, one black eye shiny and looking up at me, not fear, just like a question, burning, like of all things witnessed this one couldn’t be believed. Like that. Like fucking why?

That’s what I asked Bangley, fucking why.

She would have caught you.

So what? I had a gun, she had a little knife. To like protect her from me. She maybe wanted food.

Maybe. Maybe she’d slit your throat in the middle of the night.

I stared at him, his mind going that far, to the middle of the night, me and her. Jesus. My only neighbor. What can I say to Bangley? He has saved my bacon more times. Saving my bacon is his job. I have the plane, I am the eyes, he has the guns, he is the muscle. He knows I know he knows: he can’t fly, I don’t have the stomach for killing. Any other way probably just be one of us. Or none.

I also have Jasper, son of Daisy, which is the best last line of alarm.

So when we get sick of rabbits and sunfish from the pond, I get a deer. Mostly I just want to go up there. It feels like church, hallow and cool. The dead forest swaying and whispering, the green forest full of sighs. The musk smell of deer beds. The creeks where I always pray to see a trout. One fingerling. One big old survivor, his green shadow idling against the green shadows of the stones.

Eight miles of open ground to the mountain front, the first trees. That is our perimeter. Our safety zone. That is my job.

He can concentrate his firepower to the west that way. That’s how Bangley talks. Because it’s thirty miles out, high plains all other directions, more than a day’s walk, but just a couple of hours west to the first trees. The families are south ten miles but they don’t bother us. That’s what I call them. They are something like thirty Mennonites with a blood disease that hit after the flu. Like a plague but slow burning. Something like AIDS I think, maybe more contagious. The kids were born with it and it makes them all sick and weak and every year some die.

We have the perimeter. But if someone hid. In the old farmsteads. In the sage. The willows along a creek. Arroyos, too, with undercut banks. He asked me that once: how do I know. How do I know someone is not inside our perimeter, in all that empty country, hiding, waiting to attack us? But thing is I can see a lot. Not like the back of the hand, too simple, but like a book I have read and reread too many times to count, maybe like the Bible for some folks of old. I would know. A sentence out of place. A gap. Two periods where there should be one. I know.

I know, I think: if I am going to die—no If—it will be on one of these trips to the mountains. Crossing open ground with the full sled. Shot in the back with an arrow.

Bangley a long time ago gave me bulletproof, one of the vests in his arsenal. He has all kinds of shit. He said it’ll stop any handgun, an arrow, but with a rifle it depends, I better be lucky. I thought about that. We’re supposed to be the only two living souls but the families in at least hundreds of square miles, the only survivors, I better be lucky. So I wear the vest because it’s warm, but if it’s summer I mostly don’t. When I wear it, I feel like I’m waiting for something. Would I stand on a train platform and wait for a train that hasn’t come for months? Maybe. Sometimes this whole thing feels just like that.

From AudioFile

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B007GZELF2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage (August 7, 2012)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 7, 2012
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 900 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 322 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #70,230 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #80 in Action & Adventure Literary Fiction
- #712 in Dystopian Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #763 in Dystopian Fiction (Books)

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Peter Heller

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Peter Heller is a longtime contributor to NPR, a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and Men's Journal, and a frequent contributor to Businessweek. He is an award winning adventure writer and the author of four books of literary nonfiction. He lives in Denver. Heller was born and raised in New York. He attended high school in Vermont and Dartmouth College in New Hampshire where he became an outdoorsman and whitewater kayaker. He traveled the world as an expedition kayaker, writing about challenging descents in the Pamirs, the Tien Shan mountains, the Caucuses, Central America and Peru.At the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received an MFA in fiction and poetry, he won a Michener fellowship for his epic poem "The Psalms of Malvine." He has worked as a dishwasher, construction worker, logger, offshore fisherman, kayak instructor, river guide, and world class pizza deliverer. Some of these stories can be found in Set Free in China, Sojourns on the Edge. In the winter of 2002 he joined, on the ground team, the most ambitious whitewater expedition in history as it made its way through the treacherous Tsangpo Gorge in Eastern Tibet. He chronicled what has been called The Last Great Adventure Prize for Outside, and in his book Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River.

The gorge -- three times deeper than the Grand Canyon -- is sacred to Buddhists, and is the inspiration for James Hilton's Shangri La. It is so deep there are tigers and leopards in the bottom and raging 25,000 foot peaks at the top, and so remote and difficult to traverse that a mythical waterfall, sought by explorers since Victorian times, was documented for the first time in 1998 by a team from National Geographic.

The book won a starred review from Publisher's Weekly, was number three on Entertainment Weekly's "Must List" of all pop culture, and a Denver Post review ranked it "up there with any adventure writing ever written."

In December, 2005, on assignment for National Geographic Adventure, he joined the crew of an eco-pirate ship belonging to the radical environmental group the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as it sailed to Antarctica to hunt down and disrupt the Japanese whaling fleet.

The ship is all black, sails under a jolly Roger, and two days south of Tasmania the engineers came on deck and welded a big blade called the Can Opener to the bow--a weapon designed to gut the hulls of ships. In The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals, Heller recounts fierce gales, forty foot seas, rammings, near-sinkings, and a committed crew's clear-eyed willingness to die to save a whale. The book was published by Simon and Schuster's Free Press in September, 2007.

In the fall of 2007 Heller was invited by the team who made the acclaimed film The Cove to accompany them in a clandestine filming mission into the guarded dolphin-killing cove in Taiji, Japan. Heller paddled into the inlet with four other surfers while a pod of pilot whales was being slaughtered. He was outfitted with a helmet cam, and the terrible footage can be seen in the movie. The Cove went on to win an Academy Award. Heller wrote about the experience for Men's Journal.

Heller's most recent memoir, about surfing from California down the coast of Mexico, Kook: What Surfing Taught Me about Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave, was published by The Free Press in 2010. Can a man drop everything in the middle of his life, pick up a surfboard and, apprenticing himself to local masters, learn to ride a big, fast wave in six months? Can he learn to finally love and commit to someone else? Can he care for the oceans, which are in crisis? The answers are in. The book won a starred review from Publisher's Weekly, which called it a "powerful memoir...about love: of a woman, of living, of the sea." It also won the National Outdoor Book Award for Literature.

Heller's debut novel, The Dog Stars, is being published by Knopf in August, 2012. It will also be published by Headline Review in Great Britain and Australia, and Actes Sud in France.

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Customers find this book to be a fascinating read with well-developed characters and a thought-provoking narrative that makes them cry. The writing style receives praise for its spare prose, and one customer notes it reads like poetry. While some customers describe it as a fast read, others mention it moves at a snail's pace.

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909 customers mention "Readability"874 positive35 negative

Customers find the book readable and worth their time, with one customer describing it as a memorable first novel.

"...In any case I loved the book and if you liked The Road I would be willing to bet you would love this one even more." Read more

"...While the plot is intriguing and will keep you genuinely wanting to know how things turn out for Hig and Bangley, insights about humanity, the..." Read more

"...heroic characters, a riveting plot with edge-of-your-seat danger and suspense, gorgeous spare prose that you want to memorize, and thought-provoking..." Read more

"...because of the poetic simplicity of the prose, the sparing and economical word choice - the feeling you get that if anything else was said, it would..." Read more

709 customers mention "Writing style"535 positive174 negative

Customers appreciate the writing style of the book, describing it as beautifully and clearly written with a spare prose style, and one customer notes it reads like poetry.

"...Personally I love this style of writing...." Read more

"...a riveting plot with edge-of-your-seat danger and suspense, gorgeous spare prose that you want to memorize, and thought-provoking ethical..." Read more

"...read, and they are all the more powerful because of the poetic simplicity of the prose, the sparing and economical word choice - the feeling you get..." Read more

"...passages that need clarity, but the mix of both writing styles is extremely well done. There is something compelling about post-apocalyptic stories...." Read more

544 customers mention "Story quality"414 positive130 negative

Customers praise the well-thought-out storyline of The Dog Stars, noting that the emotions it evokes are very real and appreciating its original ending.

"...The author so completely and precisely describes the emotional part of what it's like to fly even non-flyers might taste this joy...." Read more

"...in this book that are more beautiful, more achingly honest, about true loss than almost anything else I have read, and they are all the more..." Read more

"...And, it's different, but in a good way. It fit the tone and theme of the book, and never bothered me...." Read more

"...I read, the more I grew to appreciate the book, the writing, the theme, and the questions it raises...." Read more

374 customers mention "Thought provoking"363 positive11 negative

Customers find the book thought-provoking and captivating, with one customer noting how it provides insight into the human heart and mind.

"...wanting to know how things turn out for Hig and Bangley, insights about humanity, the things we take for granted, the importance of human connection..." Read more

"...mood of this post-apocalyptic story as "hopeful." But, in its odd, idiosyncratic and special way, I think it is...." Read more

"...His pursuit of that, and the story as it evolves, are a great counterpoint to the first half of the book. It "rounds it out," so to speak...." Read more

"...It's definitely a book that provokes discussion and now I am interested to know what other people think! BOTTOM LINE:..." Read more

229 customers mention "Character development"214 positive15 negative

Customers praise the well-developed characters in the book, noting they are easy to identify and connect with, with one customer mentioning they can picture them vividly.

"...Personally I love this style of writing. It makes the characters seem so much more real and alive than when every statement is preceded by, "he..." Read more

"...Hig is a likable protagonist -- I really enjoyed his inner monologue and I found everything about him, from his thoughts to his decisions, very..." Read more

"...It has it all: flawed yet heroic characters, a riveting plot with edge-of-your-seat danger and suspense, gorgeous spare prose that you want to..." Read more

"...to get to know, but I think the author did a great job with the character development...." Read more

130 customers mention "Sadness"96 positive34 negative

Customers appreciate the book's emotional depth, describing it as a genuine psychological exploration with moments of sadness and loneliness, though some find it less depressing than expected.

"...It was so hypnotic and soothing at times, I found myself rereading paragraphs because I needed to see if anything important happened that I had..." Read more

"...The Dog Stars brims with adventure and raw human emotion. Following nine years of survival, Hig finds himself longing for other human..." Read more

"...But I'm glad I stuck with it. It's sad, with only a thin thread of hope offered for Hig and crew by the end...." Read more

"I haven’t read a book in a while and this one was so good. Action, emotion, wonder, love. It had it all. Highly recommend." Read more

95 customers mention "Enjoyment"95 positive0 negative

Customers find the book entertaining, with one mentioning it will make them laugh and cry, and another noting it alternates between funny moments.

"...aplenty, interesting characters, great writing, and a tight and enjoyable (in the end) story. It held my interest throughout, and was a page turner...." Read more

"...Heller's writing here is excellent; there's humor (albeit often of the darker sort), and through Hig, Heller informs us of the hows and whys of..." Read more

"...Satisfying." Read more

"...It is profound, riveting, addictive, and touching. What more would you want? Other than another!" Read more

93 customers mention "Pace"50 positive43 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the book's pace, with some finding it a fast read that moves quickly, while others describe it as slow, particularly in the middle sections.

"...you figure out that he pauses mid sentences it makes it easier to read with a good flow. About 3/4 of the way through the book and not disappointed...." Read more

"...This was a slower moving book. There wasn't a ton of action or a lot of events, and it definitely wasn't lighthearted...." Read more

"...This book has beautiful character development and magnificent pacing that made me drop other books to focus on seeing what happens in this one...." Read more

"True to Peter’s books this is a slow starter. Picked up and put this book down more times than I could count...." Read more

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FlyGirl
Surpasses The Road
Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2013
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I chose to entitle my post, "Surpasses The Road" because I thought if I did, those who loved The Road would be intrigued enough to look into The Dog Stars. I'll start by saying what I disliked about the book.........absolutely nothing. My tag line is, "I'm a Registered Nurse by profession and a Private Pilot by passion." I would not want to take away from non-pilots but for those of us who fly for the passion of flying I would say this book speaks directly to our hearts. The author so completely and precisely describes the emotional part of what it's like to fly even non-flyers might taste this joy. I have not been gifted with the ability to write eloquently so I'll confine my review to what I loved about the book. I figure if you read the author's description and like it you'd probably like the book. If you've read and loved the style that The Road was written in you'll love The Dog Stars. Personally I love this style of writing. It makes the characters seem so much more real and alive than when every statement is preceded by, "he then said blah blah blah". The story line is the most realistic and believable Post Apocalyptic one I've ever read. The characters were like real people, not super heroes, not moralistic saints.....just real regular people. Most PA novels have to be taken with a grain of salt, as though the author needs to throw in some over the top parts to keep our interest. I find myself rolling my eyes when this happens. I did not experience a single eye roll in The Dog Stars. I finished reading it this morning. I initially thought I really wanted a sequel, but I changed my mind about that. It doesn't need a sequel, it needs to stand where it ended and that is enough. I also decided, shortly after finishing the book this morning, that I would re-read it again.......starting today. It surprised me that this is the author's first fiction novel. It surprised me that I can say The Dog Stars is my favorite book. How can that be when there are so many other really awesome books written by much more experienced fiction writers? I don't have the answer for that so I'll cherish it for what it is and claim it to be my favorite book. It filled up a small space of what is me. I think as we get older we realize that certain people, places, things, experiences, books add to the whole. I guess it's like that statement that says the sum of our parts equal the whole. That may not be how it goes but it describes how this book affected me. It was a peg that perfectly fit an empty space in my being. I wonder if by the time we die, if we are very fortunate, all of the empty spaces are filled by gifts from the outside? I would love the opportunity to share the impact this book has had on me with Mr. Heller. He should know that he has given his readers an incredible gift. I see the author/The Dog Stars has a face book page but there has been no activity on it for over a year so suspect it would be futile to post this review there. In any case I loved the book and if you liked The Road I would be willing to bet you would love this one even more.

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Sean
A very gripping and insightful survival story
Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2022
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The Dog Stars is the story of narrator/protagonist Hig, a pilot surviving at a remote Colorado airport (with his partner Bangley) many years after a pandemic wiped out most of the world population. Hig's life consists of flying recon missions around the airport to protect their makeshift home from roving intruders. But what happens when he ventures out past the airport, into the desolate and depleted world outside?

I'd stop short of calling this book a thriller, but it was certainly a page-turner. It's very well paced and never falls flat or becomes dull. Hig is a likable protagonist -- I really enjoyed his inner monologue and I found everything about him, from his thoughts to his decisions, very believable.

The book is written in clip style - short, fragmented sentences with a shocking lack of punctuation - but, save for a few passages here and there, it's never difficult to understand what is going on.

While the plot is intriguing and will keep you genuinely wanting to know how things turn out for Hig and Bangley, insights about humanity, the things we take for granted, the importance of human connection, etc, are an equal draw to this story. It's not the most original ground to tread, but it's done convincingly and artfully here. Would definitely recommend to almost anyone.

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Cliente de Kindle
Freaking Amazing!
Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2022
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This is the best new fiction I have read in years! I would not be surprised if it becomes a classic. It has it all: flawed yet heroic characters, a riveting plot with edge-of-your-seat danger and suspense, gorgeous spare prose that you want to memorize, and thought-provoking ethical questions about individual choices and also those of human society. All of that could give you something like Lord of the Flies, which while being a classic also makes you want to take a shower after reading it, but Heller's novel allows for human decency and kindness in his grim scenario, and even lets you hope that they will triumph. In this dystopian future, a sequence of illnesses have wiped out most of humankind nine years before. The main character, Hig, together with the cold-blooded ex-military Bangley, has carved out a relatively safe area with the basics for survival, but Hig is not satisfied, and thus begins the story. I can't tolerate pretentious Literature that tries to be clever with showy plot devices. This book is written in a type of shorthand with limited punctuation which to me accentuates the bare-bones survival mode of the setting, but it adds rather than detracts from the mood and rarely slows down the reader's understanding or flow. I have read numerous books recently by authors who seem to have attended the same fiction workshop: punchy metaphors every three lines, profound holdings forth. They try so hard, yet despite the sometimes beautiful turns of phrase, they are often boring (e.g., The Flamethrowers). Heller hits it just right, with lean descriptions that are never cliché, like, "...the capillaries and arteries of falling water: mountain slopes bunched and wrinkled, wringing themselves into the furrows..." and, "...like I was living in a doubleness, and the doubleness was the virulent insistence of life in its blues and greens laid over the scaling grays of death, and I could toggle one to the other, step into and out of as easily as I might step into and out of the cold shadow of the hangar just outside." And, "I imagined his mineral eyes when they shift make a dry sound like stirring gravel." The man simply can write. But just beautiful prose is not enough, of course. I have found it increasingly difficult lately to find even simple books with a decently paced plot and interesting characters. I would much prefer to read a good, tight mystery than a more innovative novel with flat characters or an aimless plot. This story, however, delivers all that while making you think. He navigates between human callousness and its capacity for compassion. I especially like how he shows that daring to trust others in a vicious world requires much more courage than does mere self-defense. Oh, and the technical passages about flying a plane and farming, etc., are authentic and bring you right into the moment, a.k.a. The Martian. Readers who want feel-good (think Fredrik Bachman) will find this too harsh; while those who require utterly despicable characters in order for a novel to be realistic (Paul Auster) will find it too optimistic. An author who incorporates both extremes of human nature into a story you want to read has created a masterpiece, in my opinion.

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Jens Scherer
Post-apocalyptic, yet beautiful
Reviewed in Germany on January 27, 2025
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Very unusual style, but so very entertaining, touching and exciting. Full of grief, hope and beauty. Highly recommend!

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Amazon Customer
once of my all time favourites
Reviewed in Australia on January 18, 2019
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I love Post apocalyptic novels but the majority seem to be almost two dimensional survival tales. The Dog Stars however, is a rich and well crafted read with believable characters and an eye for detail. Loved it and have read it three times in the last few years.

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Blanca Rodriguez
Una maravilla
Reviewed in Spain on July 11, 2014
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Me ha atrapado como hacía tiempo que no me atrapaba un libro. El estilo, los personajes, la trama, la profundidad de los sentimientos...He llorado de emoción y de tristeza, me he enfadado, he gritado. Lo recomiendo con entusiasmo.

It captured me like no book had in a long time. The style, the characters, the trama, the depth of the feelings... I've cried with emotion and sadness, I've felt anger, I've cried. Strongly recommended.

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Pat
The Dogstars
Reviewed in Italy on February 21, 2021
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Bellissimo e struggente post-apocalittico. Il piccolo Cessna del protagonista diventa simbolo del superamento delle difficoltà e dei propri limiti. Bisogna oltrepassare i confini per rinascere. Hic sunt leones...

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S. K.
DONT EVER TRY TO READ THIS. WRITEN BY A 5 YEAR OLD
Reviewed in Brazil on February 3, 2024
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DONT EVER TRY TO READ THIS. WRITEN BY A 5 YEAR OLD

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The condition of this “new” book was awful. This was a birthday gift.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Surpasses The Road

4.0 out of 5 stars A very gripping and insightful survival story

5.0 out of 5 stars Freaking Amazing!

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5.0 out of 5 stars Post-apocalyptic, yet beautiful

5.0 out of 5 stars once of my all time favourites

5.0 out of 5 stars Una maravilla

5.0 out of 5 stars The Dogstars

1.0 out of 5 stars DONT EVER TRY TO READ THIS. WRITEN BY A 5 YEAR OLD

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Surpasses The Road

A very gripping and insightful survival story

Freaking Amazing!

Post-apocalyptic, yet beautiful

once of my all time favourites

Una maravilla

The Dogstars

DONT EVER TRY TO READ THIS. WRITEN BY A 5 YEAR OLD