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chakats

Everybody's favourite over-perfected cat!

Review: 'The Cat's Eye Pub', by James Robert Jordan

Your rating: None Average: 4.3 (6 votes)
The Cat's Eye Pub (front cover)

3 years after the events of Bound to Play, chakats Midsnow, Blacktail, and their family have made the move and immigration to Chakona the self proclaimed home world for the chakat species.

With intentions of opening their own business they are unaware of the many obstacles and challenges they will face. All while Midsnow's troubled past atempts [sic.] to catch up to hir." (back-cover blurb)

CreateSpace, June 2013, trade paperback $19.95 (308 pages), Kindle $7.99. Illustrated.

The Cat's Eye Pub, like Bound to Play and the forthcoming A Chakat in the Alley, is set (with permission) in Bernard Doove's Chakat Universe. It features those hermaphroditic centauroid felines, along with the humans, Caitians (bipedal felines), Rakshani (bipedal like Caitians but taller and more tigerlike), skunktaurs, and other species of Doove's 24th-century interstellar civilization.

Furry novella anthology 'Five Fortunes' to debut at Further Confusion 2014

Your rating: None Average: 4.2 (6 votes)

Five Fortunes Fred Patten will have a new anthology, Five Fortunes, on sale at Further Confusion 2014. The 415-page tome, published by FurPlanet, presents five brand-new novellas by fan-favorite Furry authors, four of them featuring their popular characters or settings:

The wraparound cover is by Terrie Smith, illustrating Phil Geusz’s “Chosen People”.

Review: 'Flight of the Star Phoenix', by Bernard Doove

Your rating: None Average: 3.4 (11 votes)

Flight of the Star PhoenixSix of Bernard Doove’s last seven books have been set in his 24th century “Chakat Universe”. So is Flight of the Star Phoenix, but with a difference. These are the adventures of the starship Phoenix, captained by a coyote morph and crewed by just about every species in Doove’s universe. Chakats are included in the mix, although this is not really a chakat story.

This novel is really an assembly of the thirteen Phoenix stories that have appeared on Doove’s “Chakat’s Den” website. They are called chapters, but they read more like a collection of separate short stories. Although the book has an overall theme – in 2332-2337, the interstellar freighter Phoenix must prove itself financially profitable by its fifth anniversary or go out of business – it reads more like thirteen separate adventures during those five years, with individual beginnings, plots, climaxes, and conclusions. Fans of short, episodic starship adventures will enjoy this more than the fans of long novels. And the fans of Doove’s regular chakat tales will be very satisfied with it.

CreateSpace, November 2012, trade paperback $21.95 (388 pages). Illustrated.

Review: 'Bound to Play', by James Robert Jordan

Your rating: None Average: 3.5 (4 votes)

Bound to PlayBound to Play is set in Bernard Doove’s Chakat Universe. It features those hermaphroditic centauroid felines, along with their national game of Chakker. Chakker is explained in Doove’s “The Great Game of Chakker”, in his Tales from the Chakat Universe or on his website.

Chakats Grill and Midsun are cubhood friends living in Melbourne on Earth in the 24th century, where there is a large Chakat community. They are also Chakker enthusiasts who are now in their late adolescence and on the same junior league team, the Blind Bight Cubs. Although they are hermaphrodites, Grill is more masculine and Sun is more feminine; something that they have always been aware of intellectually but now feel emotionally since they are going into heat. Being Chakats, they are less embarrassed about mating in public than being caught mating together since they are known to their families as just Best Pals.

CreateSpace, May 2012, trade paperback $12.99 (xv + 142 pages), Kindle $8.00. Illustrated.

Review: 'More Terrible Than Chains', by Bernard Doove

Your rating: None Average: 3.5 (11 votes)

More Terrible Than ChainsMelbourne Furry fan Bernard Doove’s 24th-century interstellar anthropomorphic science-fiction series, popularly known as his Chakat stories after their leading species and Doove’s own Furry persona of Chakat Goldfur, have figured prominently on his Chakat’s Den website since 1995 and in book collections from it since 2005. The Chakat stories have been mildly controversial because of the chakats’, foxtaurs’, and many other hermaphroditic non-human species’ lack of human taboos on modesty and sexuality. The Furry characters see nothing wrong with nudity or open group sex. Doove’s stories also feature his mildly-confusing hermaphroditic pronouns of shi, hir, shir, and so on; plus lots of interior illustrations by over two dozen artists.

More Terrible Than Chains, revised slightly from Forest Tales chapters #20 through #27, is the most controversial of his controversial tales because sex is its most obvious theme.

CreateSpace, November 2008, trade paperback $20.95 (360 pages; illustrated).

Review: 'Forest Tales', by Bernard Doove

Your rating: None Average: 3.4 (11 votes)

Before Transformations and More Terrible Than Chains, so much more happened. Learn about one chakat family’s lives and customs, loves and hates, friends and foes. Join with us as Chakat Forestwalker recounts tales of hir experiences and those of hir family and friends. (back-cover blurb)

Melbourne Furry fan Bernard Doove has been writing his chakat stories on his website “The Chakat’s Den” since 1995. Beginning in 2006 he began compiling his short stories into books, starting with Transformations, Jazmyn, and More Terrible Than Chains, which were story arcs that made separate novels. Now Doove has returned to his earliest stories, which did not.

'Forest Tales'; cover by Kacey Miyagami

Forest Tales contains the first twenty-seven stories in that series, redubbed “episodes”, written between 1995 and 2002. There are many more, but the series breaks easily at this point. Doove is the primary author, although four of the twenty-seven were written in collaboration with other authors, and one is written by Christian Neumann.

CreateSpace, May 2010, trade paperback $25.95 (466 pages; illustrated); e-book $16.99.

Review: 'Other Trails Taken', by Bernard Doove

Your rating: None Average: 2.8 (6 votes)

Other Trails TakenDoove lives in Melbourne and has been one of Australia’s leading Furry fans since 1993. His “Chakat’s Den” website, the home of his (and others’) chakat fan fiction, has been up since 1995. A large number of his short stories were on the website before he began collecting and self-publishing them in book form.

Other Trails Taken is subtitled A Chakat Family Journal, Book II. In fact, it is a direct followup to Forest Tales: a Chakat Family Journal, published in May 2010. It does NOT stand on its own. You have to read Forest Tales, including the stories collected in Transformations (review) in 2005 (new ed. 2008), to understand it.

CreateSpace, May 2011. Trade paperback $25.95 (499 pages).