Robert Repino grew up in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. After serving
in the Peace Corps, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing from
Emerson College. His fiction has appeared inThe Literary
Review,Night Train,Hobart,The Coachella Review, and more. He lives
in New York and works as an editor for Oxford University Press.
From the Hardcover edition.
Praise for MORT(E)
An io9 Very Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Book Of 2015
A February 2015 Indie Next List Selection
An Amazon Best Book of January 2015
An IndieBound January 2015 Bestseller "Mort(e) is complex,
beguiling, and often bloody . . . [An] utterly absorbing
debut."
—The Boston Globe
“Mort(e) catapults the reader into a wild, apocalyptic world . . .
[Mort(e)’s] journey, set against the backdrop of an ideological war
between pure rationality and mysticism, makes for a strangely
moving story.”
—The Washington Post
“With poignant flashes of a morality tale, this debut novel makes
us rethink our relationship to all of Earth’s creatures (since they
may someday turn on us).”
—Time Out New York
"Marvelously droll . . . This novel is all kinds of crazy, but it
wears its crazy so well."
—Slate
“Mort(e) is funny, smart, well-written; it’s already among the
better debuts of the year.”
—Flavorwire
“[A] first novel of notable depth and invention.”
—Las Vegas Weekly
“[N]ot your ordinary kitty…”
—Ft. Worth Star-Telegram
"An epic science-fiction thriller . . . Mort(e) will stick with you
long after you close the pages."
—Tor.com
"Robert Repino’s Mort(e) is, page after page, an infectious
tale."
—Electric Literature
"[A] twisted, insane We3."
—io9.com
“In Repino’s capable hands, Mort(e) is entertaining and intelligent
science fiction that can be read as an adventure fantasy, but goes
much deeper than that.”
—The Missourian
“What unfolds is told in a sarcastic and sometimes caustic style by
a young writer of promising talent—by which I mean, a talent that
is promised on the first page and then, after a series of ant
mythologies, feline war tragedies, and inter-species friendships,
firmly established by the end.”
—The Rumpus
“Dealing with matters of dominance, loyalty, destiny, and justice,
this engaging novel might have taken as its epigraph Alexander
Pope’s famous couplet, “I am his Highness’ dog at Kew; / Pray tell
me, sir, whose dog are you?” In the life of an uplifted cat, the
reader sees his or her own quandary as a creature suspended
uncomfortably halfway between nescience and angelic wisdom.
[T]hought-provoking and tragedy-laden . . . Completely poignant and
satisfying.”
—Barnes & Noble Review
“[A] delightful mix of alien invasion and Orwellian
parable.”
—KQED.org
"This is a wonderful book . . . ambitious, unusual,
unclassifiable."
—Barnes & Noble Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog"This is science
fiction at its best. Repino gives us a wild, imaginative and wholly
original tale without any trace of sugar-coating. He takes our
current war-addled, religion-dominated, decidedly divided society
to task."
—LitReactor
"Repino has a knack for seeing life through non-human eyes."
—Open Letters Monthly
“Absolutely incredible . . . The apocalypse has never, ever been
this entertaining."
—BookRiot
"We get all the genres on the color wheel mixed together, but
instead of producing a single black, we get a brilliant prism of
varying hues and saturation."
—Pixelated
"This is the brilliance of Mort(e) as a novel. There are
parts that make you think, that lend courage to ask questions
against the grain. It touches on things like morphic resonance
theory. It sneaks in observations similar of linguists like Noam
Chomsky, who claims language learned by small children takes place
so fast that it can’t be explained in terms of imitation alone;
that the structure of language must be inhereted in some way. But
by no means is his story didactic. Yes, it will compel the lending
of a greater kindness to pets, ants, pigeons, whatever."
—Fanzine
"If you’re looking for something a little different, Mort(e) will
deliver."
—GeekDad.com
"With sly references to Orwell’s Animal Farm, debut novelist
Repino puts a nicely modern post-apocalyptic overlay on the fable
of animals taking over the world . . . an engrossing morality tale
with unexpected depths."
–Publishers Weekly, Starred Review“Devilishly entertaining . . .
awfully good . . . a wild riff on interspecies warfare sure to make
pet owners think twice the next time their tabby cat darts by.
Imagine W. Bruce Cameron's silly and maudlin A Dog's Purpose recast
as a violent and frightening post-apocalyptic global battle for the
souls of Earth's survivors, layered with a messiah prophecy that
makes The Matrix look simplistic by comparison.”
—Kirkus Reviews"Animal Farm set in a postapocalyptic world based on
interspecies rivalry rather than communism, with a little religion
on the side, this imaginative story can be taken as a somewhat
satirical examination of the role of the individual in society.
Highly recommended."
—Library Journal
“After a fantastical leap into an apocalypse of sentient
animals, Mort(e) never looks back. Read this novel and
you will never look at your pet the same way again."
—Daniel H. Wilson, author
of Robopocalypse and Robogenesis"A beast of a novel
that exposes just how beastly we humans really are. Robert Repino's
Mort(e) is smart, engaging, and kick-ass."
—Ismet Prcic, author of Shards
"That a novel about the war between ants and humans with house pets
as warriors would be so stunningly believable and, above all,
affecting, is a testament to what a wonderful book Robert Repino
has written. Mort(e) is one of the craziest, most inventive novels
I've read in a long time."
—James Scott, author of The Kept
"In our age of first person diary-like-entry novels, Mort(e) is
both stunningly original and wonderfully heartfelt. It's a wild
ride of a book from a skilled writer I will now be following."
—Shane Jones, author of Light Boxes and Crystal Eaters
"Mort(e) is wonderful and weird, never saccharine and always
startling."
—Cat Rambo, author of Near + Far
"Combining elements of Orwellian parable and sci-fi/action
thriller, Mort(e) is a tautly constructed indictment of
much that is wrong with society, and a celebration of much that is
right."
—Matthew Gallaway, author of The Metropolis Case
"Get ready for a post-apocalyptic adventure like no other in this
tale of animals being transformed into two legged creatures that
rise up to kill their masters. This is all the master plan of
intelligent ants that have been building a Colony and plotting for
years to start a utopia free of humans. Mort(e) is a former cat
turned war hero but his true motivation is searching for his
friend, a dog named Sheba. Will the Colony win the war against
human violence, exploitation and religious superstitions or will
the human bio-weapon EMSAH help all the earth’s
creatures?"
—Barbara Theroux, Fact & Fiction (Missoula, MT)
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