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  • Published: 21 September 2021
  • ISBN: 9781641292931
  • Imprint: Soho Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $24.00

Morte



After the “war with no name” a cat assassin searches for his lost love in Repino’s strange, moving sci-fi epic that channels both Homeward Bound and A Canticle for Leibowitz.

The “war with no name” has begun, with human extinction as its goal. The instigator of this war is the Colony, a race of intelligent ants who, for thousands of years, have been silently building an army that would forever eradicate the destructive, oppressive humans. Under the Colony's watchful eye, this utopia will be free of the humans' penchant for violence, exploitation and religious superstition. As a final step in the war effort, the Colony uses its strange technology to transform the surface animals into high-functioning two-legged beings who rise up to kill their masters.

Former housecat turned war hero, Mort(e) is famous for taking on the most dangerous missions and fighting the dreaded human bio-weapon EMSAH. But the true motivation behind his recklessness is his ongoing search for a pre-transformation friend—a dog named Sheba. When he receives a mysterious message from the dwindling human resistance claiming Sheba is alive, he begins a journey that will take him from the remaining human strongholds to the heart of the Colony, where he will discover the source of EMSAH and the ultimate fate of all of earth's creatures.

  • Published: 21 September 2021
  • ISBN: 9781641292931
  • Imprint: Soho Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $24.00

About the author

Robert Repino

Robert Repino grew up in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. After serving in the Peace Corps, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. His fiction has appeared in The Literary Review, Night Train, Hobart, The Coachella Review, and more. He lives in New York and works as an editor for Oxford University Press. D’Arc follows the novel Mort(e) and the novella Culdesac in the War With No Name series.

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Praise for Morte

Praise for MORT(E) An io9 Very Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Book Of 2015 A February 2015 Indie Next List Selection An Amazon Best Book of January 2015 An IndieBound January 2015 Bestseller  "Mort(e) is complex, beguiling, and often bloody . . . [An] utterly absorbing debut." —The Boston GlobeMort(e) catapults the reader into a wild, apocalyptic world . . . [Mort(e)’s] journey, set against the backdrop of an ideological war between pure rationality and mysticism, makes for a strangely moving story.” —The Washington Post  “With poignant flashes of a morality tale, this debut novel makes us rethink our relationship to all of Earth’s creatures (since they may someday turn on us).” —Time Out New York "Marvelously droll . . . This novel is all kinds of crazy, but it wears its crazy so well." —Slate   “Mort(e) is funny, smart, well-written; it’s already among the better debuts of the year.” —Flavorwire “[A] first novel of notable depth and invention.” —Las Vegas Weekly  “[N]ot your ordinary kitty…” Ft. Worth Star-Telegram "An epic science-fiction thriller . . . Mort(e) will stick with you long after you close the pages." —Tor.com "Robert Repino’s Mort(e) is, page after page, an infectious tale." —Electric Literature "[A] twisted, insane We3." —io9.com “In Repino’s capable hands, Mort(e) is entertaining and intelligent science fiction that can be read as an adventure fantasy, but goes much deeper than that.” —The Missourian  “What unfolds is told in a sarcastic and sometimes caustic style by a young writer of promising talent—by which I mean, a talent that is promised on the first page and then, after a series of ant mythologies, feline war tragedies, and inter-species friendships, firmly established by the end.” —The Rumpus “Dealing with matters of dominance, loyalty, destiny, and justice, this engaging novel might have taken as its epigraph Alexander Pope’s famous couplet, “I am his Highness’ dog at Kew; / Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?” In the life of an uplifted cat, the reader sees his or her own quandary as a creature suspended uncomfortably halfway between nescience and angelic wisdom. [T]hought-provoking and tragedy-laden . . . Completely poignant and satisfying.” —Barnes & Noble Review “[A] delightful mix of alien invasion and Orwellian parable.” —KQED.org "This is a wonderful book . . . ambitious, unusual, unclassifiable." —Barnes & Noble Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog "This is science fiction at its best. Repino gives us a wild, imaginative and wholly original tale without any trace of sugar-coating. He takes our current war-addled, religion-dominated, decidedly divided society to task." —LitReactor "Repino has a knack for seeing life through non-human eyes." —Open Letters Monthly  “Absolutely incredible . . . The apocalypse has never, ever been this entertaining." —BookRiot "We get all the genres on the color wheel mixed together, but instead of producing a single black, we get a brilliant prism of varying hues and saturation." —Pixelated "This is the brilliance of Mort(e) as a novel. There are parts that make you think, that lend courage to ask questions against the