This book by Kira Jane Buxton first appeared on my radar several months ago when someone in my now-defunct book group in Roscoe Village mentioned it. It sounded like a lot of fun and I’m always up for stories narrated by animals. Unfortunately, with my very limited reading time (no, COVID-19 has not increased my reading time at all), I knew I wouldn’t have time to read it, and my library didn’t have the audiobook, so I had to use an Audible credit to get this one.
It’s so much fun, but fair warning, it is about a zombiepocalypse, so if you don’t feel up to reading about another pandemic right now, maybe save this one for later. Personally, I’m not a very anxious person, and I’ve hardly been impacted by this pandemic at all (knock on wood), so I had no problem diving into this one. That said, this review contains significant spoilers, so if you’d rather go into the book fresh, I suggest you stop reading here.
What makes this book different from all the other zombiepocalypse stories is that it’s told from the perspective of a tamed crow, named Shit Turd (ST for short), whose human, Big Jim, loses one of his eyeballs when he’s in the middle of doing yard work. It just falls right out of his head. Then he goes in the basement and ST can’t get him to do anything, including feed him or the dog, Dennis.
Dennis is dumber than a box of rocks, but he’s as lovable as any other dog, and while ST doesn’t have any respect for him, Dennis is the only family he has left, so ST starts taking care of Dennis.
They have enough food to last a while, so they stay inside while society devolves around them. ST is horrified to realize that all the humans seem to be infected by whatever has afflicted Big Jim, but he’s confident that there have to be some healthy humans left, and they must be working on a cure.
ST is enamored of humans, which he calls “mofos” because that’s what Big Jim called everyone. As a tamed crow who has been raised by Big Jim since he was a baby, ST does not identify as a crow and proudly proclaims himself “a mofo,” and that just delighted me.
Once things calm down ST realizes, not only that Big Jim is not the only one to be afflicted by whatever this is, but that the pets of the other affected humans are trapped in their own homes as their humans succumb to the infection, with no one to care for them and unable to get out and forage or hunt for food on their own.
Because ST is a crow, he’s smart enough to figure out how to open doors and windows so pets can get out of their homes. As a result, he becomes known as The One Who Opens Doors and becomes something of a celebrity as word of him spreads throughout the animal community.
So ST and Dennis, originally located in Seattle, travel all over the city and surrounding area, working together to free trapped animals while trying to evade infected humans and wild animals.
Unfortunately, Dennis, being as dumb as he is, charges after a UPS truck because, being a dog, of course the UPS truck is his mortal enemy. Unfortunately, this particular UPS truck happens to be surrounded by infected humans and Dennis doesn’t make it.
Despite the fact that, as previously mentioned, ST had no respect for Dennis whatsoever, he was also the only family ST had left and the two of them had bonded in the course of their adventures, so ST is heartbroken to lose his best friend.
The other animals also grieve their fallen comrade, but after a while, they beckon ST to come see something they’ve found for him. He thinks it’s a puppy to replace Dennis, despite the fact that there’s no replacing Dennis, but it turns out to be a human baby, uninfected, leaving hope that there might be another generation of healthy humans.
I should mention that ST eventually realizes that what made the humans sick had something to do with their phones, because instead of searching for brains, their searching for smartphones. They would smash through glass windows because the glass reminded them of their phone screens, and anything that looked or sounded like a phone immediately grabbed their attention. ST also found notes left by humans saying things like, “Tell Tom I love him, but do not use your phone.”
It’s clearly a commentary on how addicted some people have become to their smartphones and how it has turned them into mindless zombies, so you might want to pass on this book if you don’t appreciate that message, especially now that we’re all stuck inside and so many of us are looking at our screens more than ever.