Angry, Angry Hippos (American Hippo Review)

 It's World Hippo Day! (Feb. 15, 2022) I like hippos but, from a distance.  Hippos seem to be angry creatures who kill an average of 500 people a year.  I don't want to meet a hippo.  I will be content to read about hippos.

And there were some seriously angry hippos in American Hippo.

American Hippo by Sarah Gailey

American Hippo is a collection of two novellas and two short stories about an alternate America where hippos were imported as a food source during a meat shortage.  (This was an actually proposal at one point.  Thankfully it didn't go anywhere.)  But the hippos escaped and now they rule the swamp that used to be the Mississippi River.

This is a western with hippos.  Instead of riding horses across the plains they are riding hippos in the marshes and swamps.  Who wouldn't want to read that?  I think it is a very interesting concept and makes for some fun reading.  There is a lot going on so there never a lull in the action.  There is revenge, a love story, assassins, treachery, evil plots.  The fast pace makes this a quick read.  And even though there is a lot going on it is very much about the characters: their personal relationships, their past traumas, what brought them to the place they are now.  You get to know these people to some extent, some you hate some you like and some you are not sure how you feel about them, but you are not ambivalent about them.  I did find it a little annoying that everyone magically knew to call one of the characters 'they' instead of him without anything being said.  It's an alternate history story so I don't mind that using they as a personal pronoun is a thing in the book when it wasn't at the time the book takes place.  Neither were hippos.  But how did everyone just know?  It's not a big thing but I thought it was odd.  Other than that small point I found this an exciting, imaginative, entertaining adventure that I really enjoyed reading.  The second novella picks up right were the first one leaves off and the two short stories explain how some of the things in the novella came about.  So even though the book is technically a collection of four titles it is all one story.  This is the first book by Sarah Gailey that I have read, and it makes me want to read more.