Imagine a world in which the United States decided to have a massive hippopotamus breeding program to provide food and transport. Soon, hippos are the main way for people to travel and a whole industry is built on the backs of hippo farms, hippo trading, etc. Over the years, some hippos escape and soon there are pods of feral hippos, one of the most dangerous animals on earth when they are on the warpath. It may be hard for you to imagine, but Sarah Gailey has done it for you. Along with the hippos, she has a group of interesting characters; a rogue group who fights hippos and also steals a bit.

There is Adelia, one of the most proficient assassins known to man. She is also hugely pregnant when we first meet her. Winslow Houndstooth is the leader of the gang, a man reminiscent of Brent Maverick, charming and well-dressed. In the first adventure we read, he has been contracted to blow the Harriet Dam so that the pods of feral hippos clotted above it will escape and the Mississippi can be used again for trade and travel. The best demolition expert in the world is Hero, who is also a master poisoner. Finally, Archie is a large woman whose expertise is with a huge hammer which shatters skulls. She is in love with a straight-laced Marshall, which has its own issues.

In Taste Of Marrow, Gailey picks up the group's adventures after the disaster of the dam explosion. The group separates and none are sure of the fate of all the others. Adelia has given birth to her daughter and is determined to track the men who have kidnapped her for blackmail. Sarah Gailey has an amazing imagination and the world building is excellent. This book is recommended for fantasy readers.

This didn't go over with me as well as River of Teeth did. I'm actually not sure where the title "Taste of Marrow" comes from, and that is symptomatic of my other issues with the book.

In this book, Houndstooth and Hero are separated and believe one another to probably be dead. Houndstooth is obsessed with finding Hero and is an utter ass to Archie, who has stuck loyally by his side. Why? I don't know. Why is Houndstooth, who was portrayed as a smooth operator at first, so very useless? Hard to say. Why doesn't Archie get fed up with him and take herself off? No idea. Both he and Archie hear voices early in the book, and I had hopes that something supernatural was going on, but that idea petered out without any pay-off.

Hero and Adelia are also holed up together. Hero has forgiven Adelia for sort-of trying to kill them, mostly because they can't seem to figure out another way to handle the situation. The point of the book is to get the characters back together, and there's never really any fear that this won't happen. There's also a kidnapping plot, but the snatched baby is just a McGuffin to get everyone where they are supposed to be.

No tension, and no surprises. This isn't what you want in a heist book.

(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

A few months ago, Winslow Houndstooth put together the damnedest crew of outlaws, assassins, cons, and saboteurs on either side of the Harriet for a history-changing caper. Together they conspired to blow the dam that choked the Mississippi and funnel the hordes of feral hippos contained within downriver, to finally give America back its greatest waterway.
Songs are sung of their exploits, many with a haunting refrain: "And not a soul escaped alive."
In the aftermath of the Harriet catastrophe, that crew has scattered to the winds. Some hunt the missing lovers they refuse to believe have died. Others band together to protect a precious infant and a peaceful future. All of them struggle with who they've become after a long life of theft, murder, deception, and general disinterest in the strictures of the law.

*2.5 stars*

Coming off the back of the first novella (which I found quite flat), this story had a little more backbone, a little more depth to the characters, and the writing was a bit tighter. But, after the disappointment of book one, it didn't really have far to go to be better.

Once again, the stars of this book are the hippos (as you would expect), and the setting. Very easy to fall into the surroundings with the descriptions and I really did start to love the hippos. As a viable alternate meat source, not a great idea - as a form of transport through the Louisiana bayous, it makes perfect sense.

Once again, however, the things that annoyed me about the first book were present again. The ridiculously named characters and the gender-neutral status of Hero was a drag, even though I know what was coming. When you add characters like this, they should add something to the story - all Hero did was, well, actually, I don't know what they did. Just seemed to be included so as to tick a diversity box on some checklist somewhere.

Also, while the plot may have been dire in the first story, at least it had an element of quest/caper. This had nothing of the sort. All I got from this was a "Where Are They Now?" vibe. No plot, just a bunch of paragraphs talking about who missed who, who was lonely or in love...

Maybe I missed something there but I just don't know what the story was for...

I don't know if there is going to be any more in this series, but I do know I won't be revisiting them...


Paul
ARH

If you honestly need more convincing beyond the sci-fi genre tag and the words "hippo mayhem" then there is no hope for you.

The review will be going up on my blog (see link) on the 10th of February.


Taste of Marrow by Sarah Gailey is a novella about hippos, and the people that interact with them, set in an alternative 1890s US South. It is the sequel to River of Teeth, which I previously reviewed and which I found contained a bit too much hippo violence for my hippo-loving sensibilities.

In my review of River of Teeth I said that I probably wouldn't read the sequel because of all the hippo violence. So why did I? Well, I was told the second book had less hippo violence (true), I was invested in the characters and wanted to know what happened to them and I got a review copy of it. I started reading it near the end of a series of long-haul flights and continued while jetlagged, which probably wasn't the best way to enjoy it.

This novella picked up a few months after the previous one left off and followed two groups of characters that had become separated due to the events of the previous book. The plot centres on the characters trying to find each other again, with a bit of tying up of loose ends. There are less hippos in this one and less page time spent on their riding. Ferals do show up and meet untimely ends but on a smaller scale than in the first book. I found the hippo violence easier to overlook in this one.

I enjoyed this book but I didn’t love it. I kind of glad the series is over so I don’t have to make difficult decisions about whether to read more. Balancing my love for hippos (and my desire not to see them hurt) with the less upsetting aspects such as th diverse characters. And, for all that I’m not a fan of westerns, this one works for me (despite being set it the South, it does take a lot of queues from westerns).

I recommend Taste of Marrow to fans of River of Teeth. It doesn’t really stand alone, so if the notion of hippo-riding takes your fancy, start with the first book. If you’re indifferent to hippos but on the look out for stories with a variety of diverse characters, then I strongly suggest giving this series a go.

4 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on <a href=“http://tsanasreads.blogspot.com”>my blog</a>.

As much as I enjoyed River of Teeth, the first book in the series, this one fell flat. It lacked the fun factor of the first, and just became a confused mess of a soap opera with hardly a hippo in sight. I marked it as a DNF before the halfway mark.

Another great addition to the most bizarre yet highly enjoyable historical fiction story of the century!

What a couple of weird and wonderful novellas from Tor! Imagine a western, but the heroes have trusty and quirky hippos to ride. These are fun, easy-to-read revenge adventures starring a diverse and lovable, but flawed, gang of hippo wranglers. There are, of course, also a pick-pocket, a demolitions expert, and an assassin. Oh! And the MC name is Houndstooth Winslow Remington and he's bisexual. Extra double plus points for getting me used to reading the gender neutral singular pronoun "they." I loved these. They take a couple of hours and I really need another one to read.

“And not a soul escaped alive, and not a soul escaped alive, hi-ho hop-whoa! And everybody died.”
Not everybody, asshole, she thought tartly.

The devastation may have been severe, but our ragtag bunch of hoppers did, in fact, survive despite the songs now sung about the Harriet catastrophe. The only problem is, they’ve been split up and remain uncertain about who survived and where they could possibly be. Houndstooth and Adelia remain together and are both searching for lost loves. Archie and Hero have remained together despite Archie’s attempt on Hero’s life. But the explosion at the Harriet changed much more than the situation of the hippo population, it changed the surviving individuals too and their emotional advancement is the primary focus in Taste of Marrow.

‘Alone and lonely ain’t the same thing at all,’ Hero said, shaking their head.”

Taste of Marrow certainly lacked the focus of its predecessor, since its focus was on a group of individuals that had lost their own focus in life. Emotions were all over the place and it often felt like a bit of a scatterbrained read. The heart of this alternate history, the hippo population, took a bit of a back seat to focus more on the hoppers themselves. Also missing was the excitement of the caper/operation. While I felt this was definitely lacking when compared to River of Teeth, it still had its own individual charm and was a satisfying conclusion to the stories of these colorful individuals. Sarah Gailey is definitely one to keep an eye out for.

I received this book free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

More rampaging hippos! So, I’ve been gushing about Gailey’s first alternative history novella, River of Teeth, and Taste of Marrow picks right up where it left off. This is another fabulously diverse, weird western, where our heroes are reeling from the events of the last story. Some suspected dead, some absolutely refusing to believe the possibility that their friends are gone. But all of them are struggling to get away from their checkered pasts and move on to lives spent more on the right side of the law—but one last job stands in their way.

Yay! More of Hero!

In a sense, I didn't like this quite as much as the first story -- because there's a lot of dark stuff going on; Houndstooth is totally blinded in his search for Hero, and he doesn't mind what he does (or who he does it to) along the way. In parallel, Adelia and Hero have to deal with Adelia's baby being kidnapped, and Adelia doesn't mind what she does (or who she does it to) along the way. That does give us some interesting development for Hero, as they try to help Adelia despite their usual tendency to stay in the background and the fact that Adelia tried to kill them. But mostly, I just wanted the old band back together again already.

The end of the book delivers on that, and was pretty much exactly what I wanted. I'd love to see more of these characters, together, with their hippos, and going on capers that don't involve death, dismemberment, torture and bereavement.

In other words, hi Sarah Gailey, I am 10,000% here for Hero and Houndstooth setting up home, occasionally going on a riverboat to steal some shit or protect some hippos when they get bored.

I loved River of teeth, but this second parts is really disappointing. I didn't understand why the protagonists were doing what they were doing.
A review in spanish: https://dreamsofelvex.blogspot.com/2017/09/dos-novelas-breves-de-tor-iv.html

My first piece of advice would be – don’t start with this one, go back to River of Teeth as this novella picks up from where the first book left off and there isn’t anything in the way of ‘The Story So Far’. While there is a bit of explanation about what happened, it comes fairly late in the story and in the meantime, I think newcomers to this series could flounder.

As we plunge straight back into the action only a few weeks after the climactic events at the end of River of Teeth we meet up with all the protagonists once again as they start to count the cost of that dramatic day. It took me a while to get back into this, because not only wasn’t there much explanation, neither did we have any rebonding moments with the main characters. I did care about several of the gang members, but was rather detached from Winslow, whose behaviour wasn’t particularly pleasant. While I understood it, because the reason for it was in the previous book, we didn’t get a chance to see the justification and I think this hampered some of my enjoyment.

I do like the world very much and there was plenty going on – but I wanted more character development and longer to enjoy this interesting, vivid setting. There was a sense that this was a quart-sized story squeezed between pint-sized covers. That said, if I hadn’t liked it so much then clearly I wouldn’t have wanted more – this is really cool idea and was brought to a satisfactory conclusion this time around. I’d love to see a full-length novel set in this world, though… While I obtained the arc of Taste of Marrow from the publisher via NetGalley, this has in no way influenced my unbiased review.
8/10

I'm seriously tempted to re-read the first novella in this series after finishing Taste of Marrow. This novella had everything that I hoped River of Teeth would have, a compelling story and characters that I cared for. I had some trouble getting to know and keep apart all the character (and hippos) when I read River of Teeth. But, this time it went fine. So, perhaps it was just me and not the story?

Anyway, this novella is a fast read, a what if story about what would have happened if hippos was imported to the marshlands of Louisiana and the story takes place just a couple of month's after the ending of River of Teeth with Winslow Houndstooth's group split and he's now fearing that Hero is dead and desperately trying to find him/her. Hero (who is traveling with Adelia after she saved his life), on the other hand well, has a problem of his/her (he is mentioned as they during the book which trust me is confusing) own when Adelia's baby is being kidnapped and they have to get her back. And, that leads to new problems. A lot of action during this short novella, just the way I liked it! Btw, you just probably read River of Teeth before reading this one. Much easier to understand what happened and who they all are if one reads the first novella.

Taste of Marrow is great and I'm waiting eagerly for the next installment to be published!