This year, I did a book swap with a group of friends and acquaintances. It worked like this: Everyone who participated picked a book that they think other people should read. Then everyone got assigned someone within the group of participants they gifted this book to (there was some check for potential trigger content and that the receiver had not read the book yet).
I got A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. After two weeks, I finally found he time to read it. I like the book. It is something new but it picked up a lot of tropes and character Archetypes from literature classic. WARNING: Minor spoilers ahead.
The book is narrated in first person by Snuff. Snuff is a watchdog who is helping his human master Jack with some shady business. At first, it seems that Snuff just has an overactive imagination and needs to snarl and bark and seemingly innocent things, as dogs do:
I have to keep watch on the Thing in the Circle, the Thing in the Wardrobe, the Thing in the Steamer Trunk—not to mention the Things in the Mirror.
It gets clear pretty quickly though, that things actually are pretty supernatural. A ritual is to be prepared and several other players are preparing for the same thing (or are they?). There is an old (or young?) witch, an druid, a Vampire (the classic, aristocratic, Dracula-ish kind), a Frankentstein-like mad scientist and his experiment, a rasputin-like person, a werewolf and the Great Detective (a Sherlock Holmes kind of guy). And of course Jack (the Ripper?).
They prepare a ritual for one specific day in October and they need to figure out who is in the game at all, who is on their side and who opposes them. For that, they have animal companions. There is Snuff the Dog, there is a cat, an owl, a bat, a snake, a rat… you get the picture.
Since the story is told from the perspective of Snuff, what the humans do is not the focus of the story. It is important to the events, of course, but the focus lies on Snuff's interactions with the other animal companions. They spy on each other. They exchange information and favours. They scout, sometimes they try to sabotage others. It is a constant game of paranoia, since only in the latter half of the book it becomes clear who is an „opener“ and who is a „closer“.
It is a great book with interesting views on common character archetypes, told from a rather uncommon perspective, and mostly it does not give much exposition so the reader has to piece together what is going on by themselves. It has some horror elements but the story itself is surprisingly wholesome. I really liked the book and I can recommend it.