This novel is slightly unusual in that it is a novelization of an audio dramatization. It was serialized as a free audio book by the author in 41 installments from April 5 to October 31 (starting prior to and ending after this book's publication).

Pigs are looked down upon in this world of anthropomorphized animal (including human) nations and magic, of dramatic geographic names like the Burning Lands and Island of the Dead Warlords. Cecil “Eberhard” Berringer, a dwarf boar from the Faunatian Confederacy with a dark ring around his left eye, and his friends Corbin Zellig, Johan Tyson, Gustave Baldur, and Byron Warner, have formed Piggy Moto, an all-boar tuxedo-dressed instrumental and vocal music group, to help boars to gain a better public image.

They rely upon their musical talent rather than upon flashy magical stagecraft to impress their audiences, and do well enough that they are invited to perform in an international music competition, in the distant city of Farpoint in Lancemyth.

Dallas, TX, FurPlanet Productions, June 2011. Trade paperback $19.95 ([iii] + 297 pages).

It's been a long time since Sonic has had a console game that wasn't bogged down by experiments gone awry, usually withholding polish on what should have been core gameplay.

The Sonic fan-base has debated the exact point at which this downhill spiral began – whether it’s the over-fifteen years since Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles, or the ten since Sonic Adventure 2. However, both classic and modern Sonic fans tended to agree that the games were not improving.

Sonic Colors could be seen as the comeback for those who played it, but I was not one who did. A Sonic fan in my youth, after Unleashed I was done. After playing the last werehog level just to get to the next Sonic one and spending fifteen minutes on clunky platforming – the longest level I ever played in the franchise – I’d had enough. I don’t get paid to put myself through such torture; I certainly shouldn’t have to pay for it with time or money.

So why did I play Generations? Valve offered me a free copy of Sonic 3 and Knuckles (and Sonic 3D Blast, lest we think the ’90s had no bad console games) if I pre-ordered it for $30.

Replaying the levels of the "free" old games, I wondered pessimistically whether these gifts would symbolize the game itself: a solid, flowing platformer (Sonic 3 and Knuckles) with injections of clunky, awkward and nearly game-killing 3D elements (Sonic 3D Blast).

Thankfully, this was not the case.

Solatorobo: Red the Hunter is a story-based role-playing game for the Nintendo DS, featuring character design that should more than appeal to furries. If anything, it's as furry as any Star Fox game, and the characters’ animal nature has more effect on the story than just punny names.

The game is some sort of prequel/sequel/something to a game called Tail Concerto. I missed that one, so this was my first introduction to the setting.

Xseed, September 2011 - $34.99 on Amazon

I have been a fan of Bill Willingham as a writer (his art is good but not spectacular) ever since he wrote and drew the Elementals comic book in the 1980s. I still think that Elementals vol. 2 #15, July 1990, is one of the most perfect superhero comics ever written, and I have been reading his Fables for DC Comics/Vertigo since it started in 2002. (The second story arc of Fables, “Animal Farm”, was on the ALAA’s Recommended Anthropomorphic Reading List in 2002.)

But I’ll admit that I totally missed his first novel, Down the Mysterly River (Austin, TX, Clockwork Storybook, April 2001, 230 pages, 100 copies), when it came out ten years ago. Now Willingham has heavily revised it and it is published as a major children’s fantasy under Tor Books’ juvenile Starscape imprint, with twenty-five chapter heading illustrations and an endpaper map by his Fables partner, Mark Buckingham.

Starscape describes it as a “children’s book”. It is, but of the sort that has reviewers comparing it to the Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, the Oz books, The Wind in the Willows, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, and others with lots of talking animals and/or are dramatic fantasy adventures – books that most Furry fans will have read. While I wouldn’t rate it quite as high as a classic, this is an adventure that readers of all ages will enjoy.

Tor/Starscape, Sept. 2011, hardcover $15.99 (333 + 1 pages); Kindle $9.99; audiobook $24.99.