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

[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 :)