Now on to the penultimate Nebula novella.
If the Western can be described as "Horse Opera", this is Hippo Opera. It's set in an alternative history of the US, in which the introduction of hippos resulted in them becoming the dominant pack animal of the era. Hippo riders are "hoppers", and they ride around on their particular hop in the marshy swamplands of Louisiana accidentally created by various social improvement projects.
Our hero is Winslow Houndstooth, who has been recruited to clear out a particular waterway, which is currently infested with "ferals" and being used as a personal fiefdom by a gambler and generally all-round nasty piece of work, Travers. Travers employs a man named Calhoun, with whom Winslow has a rather chequered history, giving us a revenge plot to add onto our adventure tale.
Winslow must recruit a magnificent five and a half, and help the ferals with a bit of involuntary migration to break the hold of Travers over the land and return it to the control of the US government.
The premise is rather interesting, but the book never really delivers on it. The plotting tends to wander about a bit, and there are a few strands that seem to just disappear partway through, or get resolved entirely off-screen, when it would have been more satisfying to show them. Some of the action also runs past a little bit too fast, meaning you struggle to get any meaning or emotion from them, and they don't feel entirely suspenseful.
The additional lack of emotion extends to the characters, who all seem either a bit flat, or rather obvious stereotypes, even when they are intended to be more diverse than the usual Western cast. There's also a romance shoe-horned in that is all lingering looks and blushes, but very little actual talking about emotions or proper development.
And the villains who should be properly menacing tend to get rather short shrift in the effectiveness department. It's got a good premise, but doesn't brilliantly deliver.
Tagged: Book Alternate history Nature strikes back Novella Print