The squirrel dropped down to the floor. “Tell me a story”, he said, “or I’ll cry”.

Pity was generally no more a motivator of the Captain than fear—but for whatever reason he started to speak then.

“Once there were two brothers”.

Two brothers, one kingdom, and two companies of animals whose hatred for one another has not dimmed over the intervening years since the war’s end. The Captain, a mouse in name only, if not in character, was on the losing end of the war, with one dead eye to show for it. That singularity of vision has allowed his focus to be consumed with revenge, and now the Captain has decided that it is high time he brought the old team together for a reckoning.

This two-hundred plus page novella is the adult version of those talking animal stories you read as a kid, with nary a cute or cuddly creature to behold. The animals that inhabit these pages are ones you would shy away from if you ran into them in a dimly lit wood, despite the size advantage of being a human. They are dastardly and they are deadly; efficient killers whose skills have not diminished over time. Their story is dark, to be sure, but also wildly entertaining.

Daniel Polansky has skillfully crafted a story of page-turning suspense, which injects timely humor, and builds an unexpected pathos for a group of very unlikable creatures.

My recent trip to WorldCon brought the Tor.com novellas back to mind and as I searched through those already released, this Richard Anderson cover caught my eye. Having just turned the final page, I’m not certain anyone could have captured the look and feel of these anti-heroes as well as did Richard Anderson. This is a tough bunch, and Anderson captures that perfectly.

What also caught my attention was the Delilah S. Dawson quote on the cover:

“As unforgiving as a runaway train carrying all your friends over a cliff. I haven’t cared this much about animals since Watership Down.”

It was such an intriguing description that I had to order a copy. I am glad I did, because I found that once I started reading I could not easily set it aside.

Stories of pure, unadulterated vengeance were never my go-to entertainment choice, and the older I have grown the less interested I am in this kind of story, be it told via book, television show or film. Something about this simply captured my attention. Perhaps it was the fact that all of the characters who inhabit The Builders are animals. It somehow helps to desensitize one’s reaction to the violence, which I don’t believe would have been easily accomplished had the characters of Polansky’s novella been humans.

Something about rodents and assorted vermin killing each other doesn’t have the same shock value that it has when reading about humans doing this to one another…that is, until you have been lured far enough into Polansky’s world that you actually do start to care about this rag-tag bunch. There is no love loss even between the members of the same team, and thus it is a testament to the way in which Daniel Polansky crafted the narrative that you are both rooting for them and are presciently fearful of where the path of vengeance may lead.

With two-hundred plus pages of story, Polansky is able to paint a tangible world and inhabit it with creatures with distinct personality. The structure of the novella is very short chapters, sometimes as little as a partial page, which not only keeps the story moving forward but allows for the kind of interactions that let the reader get to know each character individually.

I have read some complaints about the way the novella ends, and if Daniel Polansky’s Acknowledgments are to be believed, the idea that it began life as something of a one-line joke, which does not hold the same level of humor for the reader as it does for the creator. However, the whole novel had something of a tragic Western feel to me, and so the final line was breathed out with the kind of irony I expect from a revenge Western.

I liked this very much, and I attribute that wholly to the way in which Daniel Polansky writes. I enjoyed the way he described things, particularly the individual character reveals. It is indeed “unforgiving”, but it makes for a compelling read.