The Golden Cat. (The Golden Cat - Gabriel King)

Member Name: thegoldencat

Product:	The Golden Cat - Gabriel King
Date:	06/12/08 (139 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The great characters and the sense of a living breathing cat world draw you in wonderfully.

Disadvantages: Manta Rays!

Overview
There is crisis in the world of cats. The feline society's king and queen have lost their kittens. One of these, though we know not which is the creature of prophecy and legend, the almighty golden cat. Its a race against time and untold evil to save them and by proxy the world.

The second book in Gabriel Kings tale of talking cats with lives set apart from the humdrum of life as domestic pets, as travellers on the so-called wild roads. Shortcuts made by cats and used as portals to other places. If you've ever thought your cat had secrets, living a mysterious second life out in the wilds. Then this book is for you.

Review
The Golden Cat* is a sequel to Gabriel King's The Wild Road, which established the charming world of cats living amongst humans as a rich and lively society full of enchanting characters, mystical themes and multifarious dangers that threaten to bring it all down about their furry little heads.

If you haven't read the Wild Road then this book will be rather difficult to follow at first, but I suppose its not a prerequisite. I think you really should though because its a wonderful book that establishes the extraordinary fantasy world this direct sequel builds upon and eventually draws to a close.

We follow the fates and fortunes of numerous cats throughout the course of the story. All are members of the group which came together to defeat the evil Alchemist in the course of the last book. At the beginning of The Golden Cat we find them all at something of a loss. No longer bound to each other in the spirit of comraderie, adrift in the world they themselves have saved. We join them splitting up and heading their various seperate ways.

Mainly we follow Tag, who is the newly appointed, and therefore still rather green, Majicou. The title of Majicou effectively makes him top dog. or rather top cat, and confers upon him numerous powers and obligations. He is effectively the god of cat-kind. This could make for a lack of compelling narrative because surely as such a powerful being he is more than equal to each and every iniquitous threat that should arise. Luckily for the reader this is not the case. Tag has not yet grown accustomed to the gravity of his position. He is not the kitten he was in the course of the Wild road but nor is he yet the omnipotent equal of his wise and knowing predecessor and so he will need the help of all his companions before the end.

The plot centers around attempts to retrieve the lost kittens of the king and queen of cats as well as a general darkening of the world, a gradual descent into chaos, if you will. The atmosphere is fraught with tension from the off as Tag finds dischord wherever he goes along the winding, mystical trails of the wild roads.

Though told from the animal's perspective. Make no mistake this is no light hearted children's tale. Far from it. The world of cats is a dark and terrible one, alive with real and frightening horrors. If you are squeamish about the idea of violence towards animals this book is not recommended. Lets just say that cats die. Its not pretty.

A sub-plot tracks the cat Sealink, another member of Tag's former hardy band as she scours amidst her former proving ground: the bustling, windy streets and potentially deadly back allies of the Big Easy, New Orleans. All in a forlorn quest to find her own kittens left there a long time ago. Sealink is a traveller from the deep south, with years of experience and the appetite of a gourmand. In the end, as a sizable section of the book, this isn't quite as compelling as the rest. Despite Sealink being a strong character, forever likable and effervescent, this part of the book feels a bit disjointed and overly wistful in tone.

As a book this is very much a case of a story carried by the likability of its characters. The plot itself increasingly trips over itself as it drifts further and further out into the realm of mystical and pseudo-spiritualistic hokum. Sometimes this enhances the tale and the sense of a fully functioning cat world: We all like to believe our cats have strange powers we don't know about. But sometimes it becomes too much, and the plot becomes almost wilfully difficult to follow. The first book was more sucessful because it didn't overstretch itself, and just depicted a simple, good ol' fashioned battle between good and evil.

If it wasn't for the various characters, each unique, likeable and believable, then this would be an outright shocker of a book. Gabriel King is not the best writer and sections without character-interaction struggle vainly against a tide of mediocrity. Unfortunately King seems to enjoy these sections. She certainly provides us with plenty of them. Scene-setting at the start of a chapter can be a showcase for a writer's technical ability, in this case we generally just get two pages of essentially nothingness before we finally get back to the action. Its frustrating and the result is a book at least a hundred pages too long.

Running though this book, along with the innefectual spiritualism, is the theme of cruelty to animals. In particular with regards to animal testing. While this is a difficult section to read not so much for its unpleasentness of theme as its boringness of plot, we can all see what she is saying and giving personalties to tortured animals is always going to evoke sympathy to the anti-animal testing cause.

I had high hopes for this book after a spectacular all-action finale and a brilliantly chilling 'to be continued' upon the culmination of the last book. In the end The Golden Cat just can't live up to this. There is never the same clear and distinct sense of threat, nor the unequivocal feeling of glory upon its vanquishment. In The Golden cat the threat seems vague and fuzzy and the denouement, despite bringing every concievable thread to a close, just a bit confusing and ultimately unsatisfying after all the portentuous build up that has preceeded it.

I don't know if Gabriel King has ever heard of the term suspension of disbelief, but she certainly asks rather a lot of the audience. My tolerance levels were certainly tested. For instance.

Lots of intelligent cats that talk to each other in an anthropomorphic fashion.
Fine. This is how it has to be in order to tell the story.

Animals doing things which you know require human dexterity and more importantly thumbs. Well this does grate a little but sometimes its necessary.

Lots of cats riding on a giant, apparantly omniscient manta ray down to the bottom of the sea, where they converse with the manta ray and are eventually taken via mystical undersea channels to Egypt.
No. Just no.

I could go on. Later you get talking mules, an Einstein of a dog and in general a gradual realisation that the writer has lost it somewhere along the line.

So to sum up The Golden Cat is a very enjoyable book set in a world which is by turns wonderfully evoked and bewilderingly patchy. The arcane, mystical aspect is more often than not to the book's detriment as it is a hand; very much overplayed. But overall this is a worthwhile and intruiging read almost purely on the basis of King's beautiful characterisation.

Gabriel King is clearly a cat owner and a big cat lover, and I imagine this book will be like catnip to fellow cat fanatics. To others unfortunately, this is just a mangey stray on your lawn. Shoo, shoo...

* - And for the record the books named after me**, not vice versa.
** - Not really, don't sue.

Summary: Fantastic but flawed book for cat fans everywhere.