cover image Solo's Journey

Solo's Journey

Joy Smith Aiken. Putnam Publishing Group, $19.95 (255pp) ISBN 978-0-399-13321-3

The territory held by old feline warrior Dom Bryndle, called a Quorum, is home to a well-disciplined tribe of feral stray catsand one wet-bottomed kitten named Solo. On the other side of the Great Fence live the Owners, a carelessly cruel breed useful mainly for the ""grail'' they discard, for the ferals have forgotten the ways of wild cats and come to depend on the Owners for survival. Solo feels the tug of the old ways, and heeding the voice that speaks within him, he reluctantly accepts the mantle of leadership. After saving his fellow Quorum members from the final depredations of the Owners, he leads them on a perilous journey to a promised land where all can live free and wild. Although it clearly follows in the footsteps of Watership Down, this slim first novel is so syrupy-sweet as to be almost indigestible. Aiken develops an imaginative language for her characters to speak, but stops short before creating an equally clever animal society, relying instead on a model that comes uncomfortably close to America in the 1950s. (November)