Books like Frost Dancers

If you have ever clubbed a hare on its wonderful rabbity dreaming head, or wiped your satisfied mouth after some disgusting English delicacy (heathens), or were a Austrian farmer deforming a rabbit to giant proportions just so you wouldn't have to get your lazy ass up from the table for thirds, then you are a horrible person and quite monstrous. I hate you if you have ever thought yourself looking quite fine on a night on the town in your rabbit fur coat. What kind of a sick person goes about stuffing rabbits with whatever it is that hobbiest taxidermists use to decorate their apartments? Maybe you sleep with Jessica Rabbit while her poor cuckolded husband is away at work, like a certain goodreader I won't mention. Or races hares against dogs in a not that fair fight? Who? And why? What kind of a sicko are you, anyway? A sick fucking sicko, I say. You should be ashamed!I promised one of the best goodreaders on all of goodreads, karen brisette, that I would post this one on my update feed so she could see it. But if you are one of those awful people I described above please don't read this review. You probably have something better to do like snapping rabbits necks after you let your sadistic five year old hold them over your bloodthirsty cat to nearly scare it half to death before you finished the job than reading my pleasant book review. You weren't even sick to your stomach as you ate grilled cheeses stuffed with rabbit meat. I am almost to sick to even finish writing this wonderful contribution to the goodreads canon.How could you??? Yeah, you were just trying to feel its soft fur! You didn't MEAN to kill it, George. I'm not buying it! Sobs.I wish it was MY calling to pen Watership Down rip-offs like it is Garry Kilworth's calling (there are more. I can't wait to read the fox one!). The other Watership Down read-alikes never could get it right. I had had this theory that it was because of the way that Watership Down was written. Richard Adams made up the story as he went along with his two daughters (for all that it really isn't a kids book, and if you refuse to read Watership Down on the grounds that it is a kids book then I secretly hate you). It had an excitement, a priceless sort of getting wrapped up in it quality, that stories you tell yourself with other people have. Anything could happen and it might happen on the air escaping from your words. I lived in Watership Down like I have never lived in another book. I would sell all of you to the great rabbit in the sky if only I could have another time like that one. He didn't recreate it in Plague Dogs or More Tales From Watership Down. Beak of the Moon, its sequel Dark of the Moon, Ramblefoot and Tailchaser's Song were all either too self concious or too moral of the story to really get in the animal world with what Adams called "dignity and animality". I never forgot about my horrible human self to be the rabbit that I know that I was meant to be. At least I'm a vegetarian. I wear eyeglasses because I have relinquished carrots to the rabbits. I will watch oranges fall from the trees and make damned sure that no worms want it before I sink my teeth into its mostly by now rotten fruity flesh. I may suck but I'm not as sucky as SOME people.At the risk of making goodreads throw up in its mouth I will say that Frost Dancers (despite that shitty title) is like Watership Down with a little bit of the essence of my beloved Joy Williams (I know, shut up about her already). I'm talking the best ever Honored Guest Joy Williams that is the line between life and death before you finally cross over to the death side for good. If Yoda wasn't full of shit about the earth and life and if you gave enough of a shit you could sense it despite not having the time not to be a shitty human most of the time. If my man Dick Van Dyke were here right now he would draw some chalk drawings (but really good ones!) on the sidewalk for you of hares, rabbits, predators, horrible people (people suck! They really do) and prey and predator dropped over the shitty Earth where they can't see where the cracks are to avoid falling into them in time. The drawings would blur with the natural mountain dust where blue mountain hare Skelter comes from to running through the fields mud when the asshole men make him race against dogs to the weirdo rabbit warren rock to the snotty field hares snot from crying because when will you ever get to rest and just be a good old hare (or rabbit? Sure the hares look down on them some). We'd jump into them and then we'd move between each panel of the you're lucky if it ever works out right life. People, I mean animals, looking out for themselves. The good old not naturalness of nature. Skelter has dreams of ghost hares that lived thousands of years before. If you ever had any hope of anything mattering it's that tiny bit of you that lives on in those before you and after and why not in those loveable hares?I was surprised Frost Dancers was this good, really. I thought it was going to be lackluster like all of the other Watership Down rip-offs I tortured myself with. The main thing is that Kilworth took to heart the respect that Adams had for rabbits. He didn't set out to turn them into humans. They have art and tell stories and who is to say that rabbits don't have feelings before you stick them in a hutch for four years of their short lives for some dried up carrots and heavy petting? Kilworth didn't rewrite Watership Down's plot of looking for a home (Beak of the Moon had no life whatsoever of its own). Is it too much to ask for to get Watership Down again and not get Watership Down again? Why can't they do this one thing that I ask? For all my huffery and puffery in this review, the people suck but not all of the people suck. It's looking out for yourself and not bearing to be too sad about it when a fellow hare gets it from one danger or another. They are so downtrodden matter of fact about it that it is downright adorable. Everything from finding a mate, food, a home, dying- it is all "Well, ok... if you must." That does make me feel like my own state of being than another state of being like Big Wig being so damned awesome in Watership Down, though. Skelter is pretty freaking adorable anyway because he's not really defeatist so much as what else am I going to do? He would die if he got his hopes up too much and he would die if he just gave up. It is kind of how like the real blue mountain hares live. Unlike most hares, they do make some sort of enclosure to hide in from flying predators. They still don't go all the way under ground like rabbits do. One blue hare some where along the line probably died in front of another blue hare and the field hare down the line thought, "Thank god that was them instead of me." That kind of evolving and togetherness and once in a while a different kind of "Thank god that wasn't me". The badgers weren't so bad (even if they eat rabbits). There's hope!The human the hares come into contact with the most is a mysterious tractor man with his own tragedy (through the edges of their vision he gets into a duel with another man over a woman. The other man and the woman die. The tractor man later takes his own life). Their not natural enemy, the flogre Bubba, was captured from his home and raised by his "mother" (the kind of man who would capture a South American harpy eagle and name him Bubba!). I know Bubba is really the bad guy to the hares and other creatures, but I kind of loved him too. He talks to the tower(s) he lives in! And it talks back to him! And the voice he hears of the tower will admit that they are just lonely together rather than having true company. I freaking loved that kind of honesty! His end of being captured as pet again and suspicious of the only nice dog in his captivity was too perfect. Kilworth knows, man. Stupid humans kidnapping wild birds from other countries and keeping them as pets. What kind of a sick fuck? (I didn't go into south america and kidnap Cortazar and Marquez, my birds. I know what you're thinking but they were born as pets. That blood on the hands is not mine. And my chihuahuas were domesticated even before the Aztecs. That ancient curse shit is not mine! What kind of a jerk goes about judging people on goodreads, anyway?)I suck at describing why shit is funny. Frost Dancers had me doing a sad laugh in the cavity of my heart so many times. Like this one on page 41 after the hares in Skelter's home are taken:For all they knew, the others had been killed and eaten by the time they were eventually lifted out of the truck, and placed on the concrete ready for collection by some human with a fierce hunger.I don't know why but that kind of pessimism won me over. I liked that nothing was ever easy. Good things don't really happen that often in Frost Dancers. When they do they don't make a big deal over it either. I really liked that. Don't get your hopes up!I think I can't hack it as a hare. Maybe I'll be an American cottontail rabbit because they live free in the wild. Rabbit tunnels would kill me. I am going to be a rabbit so stop laughing at me. Did I ever tell you about the time when I was six and obsessed with my faux rabbit coat? I would never take it off? One day in class a kid complains that it is too hot. "Me too!" I pipe up. "Of course YOU'RE hot, Mariel, you never take that stupid coat off!" That's what happens when I try to move about in society for some give and take. I know that's how I took it then (not MY fault). If I were a loner cottontail rabbit I would have it made. Not all hares like to live alone and some do. It can be a problem if you are one of the hares who wants some company some times (poor old Skelter). At least the blue mountain hare does have it better. Did I mention this is the only Watership Down readalike (WD included) that isn't fucking sexist? I love that this isn't. The females and all the other creatures all have their own lives just like everything in Joy Williams short stories (subliminal message). Skelter may be the "hero" but the understated approach to making it through is everyone's chance. I don't know how to describe this conscious but not too conscious way of living as the animals in this book. That's the best I've got. It's not really totally Watership Down either because in that book you are living like you're one of them and your dogs start to look threatening after a while. Frost Dancers pulls back and you see the badgers and poor bad boy Bubba. That's really good. It's threatening but if it happens you could feel some of Bubba's hunger enough to make it sickly satisfying.But still no Big Wig. Is that too much to ask for that I get to run away with Big Wig? Why can't I have that? All I want is a bunny rabbit to be my friend at all times. I can't hack it with the humans. They are going to eat me alive.Oh yeah, the title refers to the mating stuff. I still don't think it is a fitting title for the book. Still, the romance is like back burner and a surprise when it happens, like any real life romance would be. Nice! Kilworth wrote a Highlander novelization. It seems that it is also his calling to write novelizations of crappy movies about Scottish characters. So, I have a burning question that no one has ever been able to answer to my satisfaction. Why do they say in the film and tv show that they are something other MacCloud from the clan MaccCloud when Mac or Mc means clan? Why?!!!!! Why do people want to hurt bunnies who never did them any harm and why this? Please help me.P.s. Even though Frost Dancers is really sad I did NOT cry because hares don't cry. It's too tough to cry. Chin up! Are you a man or are you a rabbit?P.s.s. How could you cry when it is so funny that even the rabbits sell their souls like us shitty humans? I hate to laugh and I love to cry here. Frost Dancers is freaking awesome. I think maybe two people on goodreads (that I know of) will have any interest in this review or this book but for those people I say read Frost Dancers. It's damned good. Not that anyone listens to me because no one listens to me.