First and foremost: thank you to Boyd Craven for writing a book where Kevin Pierce, the voice of the apocalypse, has to talk… like a toddler. Seriously, this made the book for me. As unbelievable as it was, it was perfect to hear him try and do scenes of “Mamamamama” and “Dadadada”. I know they weren’t meant to be funny, but I hope a part of you wrote that knowing that Kevin was going to have to narrate it later.
I think this is one of those books where if you own a dog – you will absolutely love it. The main characters in it are three well trained German Shepard’s. Sure there are the human characters (husband Rick, wife Tina, and 2-year-old son) but we all know that these Opus books are about the dogs.
I have a dog who is a mix between a Shiba Inu and American Eskimo – while he doesn’t do all of the things that Opus, Ophelia, and Sarge do – he does some of them. And that made me like this book even more. He chuffs and answers me when I ask him questions. It’s pretty funny reading a book where the dogs do the same thing.
There were chapters where Craven would write the story from the Dogs point of view – and those were my absolute favorites. There would be lines like “the human that I’m babysitting” and “up like the sky and down like the ocean” when talking about going up vs down the stairs. Lots of these little lines were in the book but really made the characters likable and to anyone who owns a dog and wonders how they think, it was endearing for sure.
This is an extremely hard book to characterize because it wasn’t a Post-Apocalyptic story (at least as typical stories like this go). But it was more of a Thriller that contained a character who was a Prepper.
Overall, I thought that Opus Adventure was a great book that really warmed my heart. I’m sorry to hear about Craven’s loss at the end and I can imagine how hard writing a book like this would be after losing your best friend like that. You could tell that he added in some of the “feelings” that Opus was going through (being stiff, not feeling the way he used to, still feeling like a puppy) that were probably related to the aging and loss of his dog. It was extremely well done though. I requested a free copy of this book – it has not affected my review in any way.