Rating: 
Summary: Astonishingly imaginative and original literary fiction
Review: This is one of the most original and deeply moving books I have read in a long time. It is neither "horror" nor "science fiction," though it plays off both those genres. Rather it is deeply felt, brilliantly imagined literary fiction. I will remember it all my life.
Rating: 
Summary: the work of an amateur
Review: I bought this book for the sake of the audacity of the concept. I (foolishly) thought that an idea this ridiculous must have something really exciting to redeem it in order to make it publishable, but simply stated, this is awful.
Our suspension of disbelief wears off under the burden of implausibility never mitigated by any skillful artifice of the author, and soon there is just no getting past the perfectly dreadful prose. I found myself editing nearly every sentence, trying to shape those leaden and so often misaligned words into something a little more bearable. The plot(?) is just as amateurish as the prose, and the denouement is worse. No real need to go on about this monstrosity; I hated nearly everything about this in the end, and I found myself incredulous and angry that it had even been published.
Rating: 
Summary: Unusual horror story
Review: The year is 2009, and Cleo Pira has an interesting job - as a free-lance journalist she is able to investigate unusual stories. She comes across a tale most bizare-if it is true-that the 150 self-proclaimed "monster dogs" who have appeared in N.Y.C. are not a hoax. Cleo is invited to be their biographer and recount the history of their creation, through the efforts of mad Prussian scientist, Augustus Rank. The dogs have been surgically altered to walk upright, speak, use prosthetic limbs and have an intelligence similar to humans. Their own historian, Ludwig Von Sacher, has fallen prey to a malady that seems to be spreading throughout their colony-a type of insanity which has no cure. Ludwig comes to love Cleo, though his mental deterioration causes him to confuse her with Augustus Rank's mother, Maria, whose ghost seems to occasionally enter both of their lives. The dogs reveal their emigration from Canada to America was precipitated by their destruction of the human scientists/masters who held them captive. The rebellion in "Rankstadt" (the city) occurred after Augustus Rank's death and was lead by a dog Mops Hacker, who had been ill-used. The beautiful Samoyed, Lydia, was the only dog who did not participate; instead, she killed Mops Hacker when the opportunity presented itself, despite the fact she loved him. Lydia is an interesting character, but throughout the book keeps her secrets from being revealed, which is frustrating. The story is moved forward through three diaries; Cleo's, Ludwig's and the deceased Augustus Rank. Rank was the true monster, rather than the dogs. His diary is revolting as he recounts the horrible and twisted acts of vivisection he performed on numerous small animals- and the enjoyment he received from this. His uncle finds some of his surgical "experiments" and instead of having him locked up (and hopefully throwing away the key) lauds Rank as a child prodigy and promptly enrolls him in medical school as a surgeon. Rank manages to murder his half-brother and gloat about it in his diary; he also dreams of creating "monster dogs" who would be absolutely obedient to him: "Their minds will be my mind, their hearts will be mine, their teeth will by my teeth, their hands will be my hands." He achieves this bizarre goal, and enlists followers to help him carry on with the so-called glorious work. For some reason, the dogs who learn of Rank (who is long gone by the time of their creation) obsess and long for him as "their father" but hate their actual creators (Rank's scientists.) Part of this stems from the fact that somehow they have lost their love of humankind through the changing process. This is clearly demonstrated in the opera they write and perform, which is quite unusual. Lydia and Ludwig are the only dogs that demonstrate they still retain love for human beings through their behaviour towards Cleo. This is NOT a "Watership Down" type of novel; it really is closer to an Anne Rice story in style, which at times is both lyrical and haunting. The depths of the dogs' true natures and the obvious loss of love for men (with the exceptions I have noted) is never fully plumbed. Parts of the story are disjointed, and I suspect an over-zealous editor was a factor. The ending is rushed and unsatisfying. However, the writing style is compelling; the plot is unique; the characters leave you wanting to find out more about them. In the same vein, one may compare "The Monster Dogs" to "Sirius" by Olaf Stapledon, a rather hard-to-find book which has at its core the same theme and issues. The difference is that in "Sirius" the intelligence-enhanced dog is raised by a loving family who strive to understand and accomodate the terrible loneliness which such a genetically-altered being is subject to. In Stapledon's book, the best of the dog's traits,unconditional love and loyalty, are more pronounced. Bakis' dogs have lost this; an irony, since this was the one thing Rank wanted more than anything from his creations, feeling himself an outcast from society. The question of how dogs would relate to people if they themselves were manipulated into being a semblence of humans is an intriguing one; the theme of psychosis following the dispensation of accelerated intelligence without proper grounding a recurrent one. Compare "Flowers for Algernon" which also has the short and heady rise to genius followed by an abrupt descent into inevitable madness. I hope to see more from Bakis in the future; she assuredly seems a rising star among writers.
Rating:
Summary: best fiction I've read yet in my life!
Review: Every single person who I have given or loaned this book to has finished it the same day they started it. It's like Frankenstein meets watership down. Even though the book has many fantastic science fiction elements (notably dogs with electronic voice boxes and mechanical hands so that they can talk and interact with humans..) it still touches on universal themes (what makes humans human? Where is the divide between beast and man? What happens when we start to see the beast side coming alive?). That is you need not be a science fiction buff to enjoy this book. I'm not someone who reads and enjoys many fiction books, but this one gripped me from start to finish and I was compelled to not only buy another copy or two to mail to friends but also to write a great review of this book. If you only buy one fiction book this year this should be it.
Rating: 
Summary: What a strange world
Review: An alternate reality as vibrant as our own. The dogs are as real as you or I. They walk among us or cruise in limosines, they politic and backstab and they decend into insanity. More than anything I am reminded of Frankenstien - true, the Island of Dr. Moreau might be more pertinent, but the very earliest thoughts of the modern era about what it might mean to make artificial life are echoed here in bold. Will these creations of ours be better than us? More brutal? Kinder? Or will they be just like us; unwilling to let go of the chains of power, unwilling to ask for help and keeping secrets to the bitter end? Do we as humans even have the right to create new beings, or does it require the mind of an insane person to execute on this dream? The book is ultimately very sad and sweet at the same time. It is very apparent that it is a first work - the author has a few problems expressing herself, but this is overtaken by her driven prose and obvious zeal for the story. Wonderful, unforgetable characters. I'll never forget the historian.
Rating:
Summary: A highly original debut novel
Review: For a first novel, Kirsten Bakis proves to be an assured craftsman. This is especially true considering how original her concept is. This is a hard novel to classify - it is not just a horror novel, or a science fiction novel, or an allegory. It is all those things and more, creating a truly unique dreamlike vision. The best parts of her novel is how well Bakis leads us into her world and how convincing she makes her talking dogs think and act. The opera libretto and the politics behind the dogs are quite good. The weakest part is the finale, where too much happens too fast (the fate of her friend Ludwig, the castle party, etc.) Still, this is a highly readable, thought provoking debut effort.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Debut
Review: This was a great story. I'm not going to rehash it, since it's been done already. But I hope she has a second novel out soon. This one was imaginative, well wrought and tastefull.
Rating:
Summary: An Odd, Interesting First Novel
Review: Kirsten Bakis has created an interesting fantasy with heavy doses of gothic about these dogs who talk and think and then party and die in her first novel, Lives of the Monster Dogs. It is ultimately a sad novel. It is written with the romanticism of past centuries in its truly Victorian sensibility, which is found in the writing. It could have gone a little farther in that direction, particulary in the Manhattan castle sequences which could have used a taste more of Mervyn Peake's neo-Gothic romanticism. The imagery would pull back a little just when it should have thrust forward but this is a minor quibble in an impressive first novel with a very original idea combined with a feel for the past.
Rating:
Summary: Fun idea, shallow writing
Review: Great to see a new writer with an original twist on the horror genre. Unfortunately, this book reads like a first novel. The author just doesn't have a sure hand at storytelling. When you write a horror or fantasy-type book, you are allowed to ask the reader to suspend belief over one fantastic idea. From that point, though, everything has to be "true." The characters and plot have to develop in a realistic way from that far-out premise. That's where this one doesn't work. The culture of Prussian "superdogs" is a great idea in the "Island of Dr. Moreau" tradition, but what happens following their arrival simply follows the cliches & just doesn't ring "true" from sentence to sentence. The characters are thin, and the plot copies -- rather than pays homage to -- all the old "B" movies. Fun light reading, maybe, but that's it. I do hope Bakis sticks with it, though. There's the kernel of a really good yarn in here, and she may yet develop into a first-class writer.
Rating: 
Summary: An intriguing premise leads to disappointment
Review: I bought this book after I heard it described on NPR; I thought any first novel with a title that good was worth a look. Unfortunately, the execution fails to live up to the premise. The writing is often thin, as in the frequent fictional excerpts from newspapers and magazine or journal entries in which the author's tentative voice never adapts to the tone of the purported source. The plot, which proceeds briskly, never really goes anywhere -- there are hints of sinister secrets that are simply left hanging, foreshadowing of malevolent intentions that either never surface or are frustrated too easily. The novel ends up feeling like a story that gets by on an eye-catching premise and nothing more. As a footnote, the premise never really adds up anyway. Why would anyone think that walking, talking, intelligent dogs would be the perfect super-soldier? Why not robots? Or gorillas? Or chimpanzees? Or, or, or... robots?
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