The Winter Door, by Isobelle Carmody

[rachelmanija]

Sequel to Night Gate, in which, you may recall, I was fascinated by the twelve-year-old heroine's stirrings-of-first-love relationship with Billy Thunder, her dog who turns into an attractive teenage boy when they go to fantasyland together to try to wake her mother from a coma.

Now back in the real world, it turns out that Rage's mom briefly rallied, but is now worse than ever. Oops. To Rage's sorrow, Billy Thunder is a dog again. For the first half of the novel, Rage has brief dreams of fantasyland, but much of the action involves her battle and then friendship with a troubled bully from her school, Logan. A human rival for Billy Thunder, I thought.

But when she finally confides her magical adventures to Logan, he becomes fascinated - even a bit obsessed - with her descriptions of Elle, her dog who became a beautiful blonde girl. For the rest of the book, she and Logan have somewhat random fantasyland adventures while Rage longs for Billy Thunder and Logan longs for Elle. This is the first novel I've ever read in which the romantic quadrangle consists of two humans and two transformed dogs.

A third book was promised, but that was seven years ago.

Winter Door

Comments

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Wow.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

That raises some sort of interesting issues of consent and...um. And of WTF. But I guess since it's all about longing rather than anything more, I am just left at WTF.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

If Billy and Elle were were-dogs from the get-go, I would not have blinked an eye. But when they were born as dogs, and were introduced as dogs, and, in our world, can only exist as dogs... to me, they are DOGS.

While they have human intelligence when they're human, for the first half of this book, while he's a dog, Billy does tons of normal doggy stuff like licking Rage and eating from a bowl on the floor and it's just. so. weird.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Yes! And even more so on the consent issue is the fact that Billy belonged (as a dog) to the person who thinks he's hot (as a human). And thus is all...imprinted on her as an authority figure. Which brings in issues similar to that of parent/child or teacher/student relationships.

*waves hands* Weirdness.

[erikagillian.livejournal.com]

And do they remember being human? I was thinking that's just cruel to the dogs. Unless they prefer being dogs :)

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

Squickier and squickier. Possibly just as well there was no third book. (Or maybe that is WHY there was no third book.)

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

Yes, this seems like a story element that most Western publishers would find questionable, to say the least. On the other hand, human/transformed dog attractions are more common than you'd expect in manga, especially in BL, most notably the lightheartedly porntastic "Man's Best Friend" (in which even when the dog shapeshifts into human form, he can barely talk and has rather low-I.Q. human intelligence, at best).

On the other hand, the shoujo (girls') manga "Guru Guru Pon-chan" handles this theme more along the lines of "Night Gate"/"The Winter Door." In this series, the girl dog Ponta has been repeatedly transforming back and forth between her human and canine forms ever since she was a puppy, courtesy of a magic bone her owner invented. So, for all practical purposes, she is a were-dog--although when she goes to school she seems unable to learn how to read, whether because she's just too easily distracted by everything else going on around her or because she initially aged at a canine rate, going from toddler to adolescent within one year (which presumably affects her mental and psychological maturity level). Also, the guy she falls for is a neighbor, not a member of the family who owns her, although she does sort of imprint on him when he saves her from getting run over the first time she accidentally turns into a human and toddles out into traffic. I haven't read the final volume of the series yet, but it seems as if even if the boy and the shape-shifting dog don't actually end up together, the mangaka is heading toward presenting the prospect of things not working out for them as some kind of interspecies Romeo and Juliet-type tragedy.

[branna.livejournal.com]

The only similar plot line I can think of is Doranna Durgin's DUN LADY'S JESS and sequels (involving a transformed horse).