Description:

Ever since his classic debut, The Tar-Aiym Krang, the first of the wildly successful Pip and Flinx adventures, New York Times bestselling author Alan Dean Foster has captivated readers around the world. Now this writer of bold imagination and stunning originality has created an electrifying space epic set in a universe at once strangely familiar and starkly terrifying. Familiar because the universe is ours; terrifying because the human condition might soon be. . . .

Not so long ago Marcus Walker was just another young commodities trader in Chicago, working hard and playing harder. But that’s all in the past, part of a life half forgotten—a reality that vanished when he was attacked while camping and tossed aboard a starship bound for deep space.

Desperately, Walker searches for explanations, only to realize he’s trapped in a horrifying nightmare that is all too real. Instead of being a rich hotshot at the top of the food chain, Walker discovers he’s just another amusing novelty, part of a cargo of “cute” aliens from primitive planets—destined to be sold as pets to highly advanced populations in “civilized” regions of the galaxy.

Even if he weren’t constantly watched by his captors, Walker has few options. After all, there is no escape from a speeding starship. Another man might resign himself to the inevitable and hope to be sold to a kindly owner, but not Walker. This former college football star has plenty of American ingenuity and no intention of admitting defeat, now or ever. In fact, he’s only just begun to fight.

The adventure will continue with two more novels

From the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Alien abductions are fast becoming an SF cliché, but bestseller Foster (_Dirge_) puts a fresh spin on the theme in the wacky first book of a new comic SF series about Marcus Walker, a Chicago commodities broker, and George, a talking dog. Both fall victim to the seven-foot Vilenjji, who roam outer space and snatch specimens from various backward planets to sell as novelty pets to wealthy clients. Marc and George are the only Earth samples in the vast traveling zoo en route to an undisclosed alien marketplace. The other oxygen-breathing sentients—caged in enclosures that imaginatively echo the places where they were captured—can communicate with each other and their captors, due to implants that have been softwired into their brains. Much mayhem ensues as Marc and the streetwise mutt decide to attempt an escape with fellow zoo allies, the huge, very scary, always hungry poetry-spouting Braouk ("Sorrow is sharing, the abducted are together, many one") and the tiny, bejeweled, hysterically superior Sque ("a female of the K'eremu"). Walker's enthusiasm in taking stock of the assets at their disposal in their wild bid for freedom—something his work has taught him to do "when faced with a difficult set of circumstances"—and George's doggy determination make this a winner for all ages.
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From

Young-turk commodities-trader Marc Walker is camping alone in the California wilderness to win a bet with his hometown Chicago buddies when he's cold-cocked by buglike purple aliens and whisked into interstellar space. When he comes to, he finds himself isolated in a force field, along with his tent; selected pieces of the surrounding Sierra Nevada scenery; and George, a dog that talks, thanks to a universal translator and canine cranial upgrade. Through his furry friend and a snooty, octopus-like fellow captive, Walker learns that he and a menagerie of colorful extraterrestrials are prisoners on a galactic slave ship and destined to be sold as curios by their enterprising, amoral captors to the highest bidder. The parable of humans plucked for an alien zoo has been told often in sf but never with greater flare and more intrigue. Foster doles out enough wit, suspense, and original alien anthropology to keep readers spellbound from chapter one on. The utterly enchanted may look forward to a pair of sequels filling out a prospective trilogy. Carl Hays
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