Dogs And Goddesses
By Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart, and Lani Diane Rich
Published by St. Martin’s Press, 2009

Review by Debra Louise Scott

You bake cookies and suddenly an orgy breaks out all around you. You click your Bic pen and stuff just ‘happens’ to people. Painting your kitchen gives you an orgasm. And, oh yeah, the dogs are talking to you. No, I mean really, they’re TALKING! To badly paraphrase a song: Who let the Gods out? Woof, woof, woof, woof!

Dogs And ¬¬¬¬Goddesses is somewhat akin to Neil Gaiman’s American Gods at least from the standpoint of ancient deities living ordinary lives and having to work their way around modern conventions and conveniences. But whereas Gaiman’s gods are schlepping around America with their own agenda, using the protagonist like a pawn in their game, the three main characters of this story have to deal with deity inside their heads competing for control over daily life in an otherwise sleepy college town.

When a Goddess from Mesopotamia (a fictional contemporary of Ishtar) is called into being at the site of a transplanted Ziggurat, aided and abetted by a family that has remained loyal to her from ancient times, the three women find themselves caught up in a war of divine proportions. The Goddess, accompanied by her retinue of dogs, tries to set up her temple like it used to be in the old days, but times have changed and it’s not so easy to get people to worship and swear blind allegiance anymore. She’s not pleased and unleashes divine mayhem.

The Three along with their dogs go through a great trial and error period learning to control the heritage they discover inside themselves, a good part of which is an eroticism of mythological proportions! It takes all of that and a sacrificial God to turn the tables on the Ziggurat Goddess.

This cleverly written book is a fun read, and will ring bells of recognition to anyone in the esoteric arts who has experienced the odd sensation of having deity ‘in your head’ in the form of ritual invocation or as some traditions would say, ‘riding’. It’s especially fun for dog-lovers, hearing the canine perspective of the human’s world.