Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams

Book Summary (From the book)

Meet Fritti Tailchaser, a ginger tom cat of rare courage and curiosity, a born survivor in a world of heroes and villains, of powerful feline gods and whiskery legends about those strange, furless, erect creatures called M'an. Join Tailchaser on his magical quest to rescue his catfriend Hushpad -a quest that will take him all the way to cat hell and beyond...

My review

Recently I read The Dirty Streets of Heaven and I liked it. So when Veronica talked about this book in the S&L podcast...well let's just say it really caught my attention.

The edition that I read had a special introduction from the author and right there it grabbed me:

         And for the first couple of years the I lived as a human domesticated by cats, it pretty much stayed that way [...]

A human domesticated by cats! I was reading this part with my cat on my legs, very carefully so he wouldn't be disturbed, and just couldn't help but smile to such sentence...because is completely true.

Are you a cat person? If you are not, is ok, I am, but I will not make a post telling you how awesome cats are in my opinion. But this is a book for a person that has interact with cats at least once. The way Williams describes the daily routine of the felines, they "dancing", the interactions is just possible if you had a cat. It was very amusing to me read a particular part, look up and see Hoppi doing the exact same thing. 

I really enjoyed the mythology that Williams created, the Gods, the way the world was created, how Man, oops, sorry, M'an came to be show a very good story telling ability.

I was a bit disappointed with what happens to Hushpad, Tailchaser's object of affection; I won't give  you much details, but I was actually proud of Tailchaser for his final decision. 

A lot of people, me included, will say that this book feels a little bit like LOTR with cats, and although there are several similar moments (just like HP has them too) I believe this book can stand on his own, thanks once again to the mythology construction.  

I wish there was a second part to the book, because there are some characters that I would love to know what happened to them after the whole ordeal.

This is another book that will go to my list of books to read to my kids, if ever I do have kids.