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| The Pet Thief
ISBN: 9781573668392
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / The University of Alabama Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Human experimentation in medicine;
The Pet Thief is a dystopian fable of science, rebellion, humankind's inhumanity, and the struggle for identity and survival in a post-human world. When scientists, the government, and venture capitalists conspire to hybridize humans with animals--cats, specifically--for organ harvesting, drug testing, and military applications, the experiment is an irredeemable failure, producing human-like beings with uncanny abilities who are nonetheless fundamentally defective.
Oboy and his mentor/tormentor Freda are two wayward hybrids, "cat people," who have escaped with others to the depths of a rundown European city being leveled for reconstruction. They are members of a street gang led by an ominous leader called Swan.
Oboy is unable to think or speak except in mimicry, but he is a physical savant, which serves Freda's mission. Enraged at what has been done to her, Freda wants to "rescue" every pet she can. When Oboy returns with a human baby after his first solo outing, their world and the truths of their existence come unraveled.
Kassten Alonso 's first novel Core: A Romance was an Oregon Book Awards finalist in 2005. He has previously published in the Portland Mercury , Portland Monthly , and The Oregonian , and was a contributor to Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon's Sesquicentennial Anthology, A Merging of Past and Present Oregon Voices and Stories . He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, author Monica Drake, and daughter, Mavis. |
