The Builders

[sawyl]

Another book I've been meaning to read for an age, Daniel Polansky's The Builders combines elements from spaghetti westerns with the very best anthropomorphic traditions to craft a story about a group of small animals setting out to settle an old wrong. It sounds like it shouldn't work, but it does. Brilliantly.

A mouse walks into a bar. The mouse is the Captain and he is waiting for his old crew to reassemble themselves. First to arrive is Bonsoir, the flamboyant French stoat. Next Boudica, an opossum and an elite sniper, closely followed Cinnabar the salamander, a creature so fast and so famous he is nicknamed the Dragon. Barley the Badger has reluctantly put aside his peaceful life to return to a career in murder, while Gertrude the mole has given up a life of organised crime. Finally with Elf the terrifying Owl, earthbound by a broken wing and increasingly crazy after a terrible personal betrayal, the party is complete.

As the origin stories unfold and we learn a little more about the Captain and his fellows, it becomes clear that they are all nursing a terrible anger. It seems that many years ago, they involved in a great struggle, only for events to end in betrayal and injury and bloodshed. And now the Captain is finally ready to draw his old friends back into the game and to strike against his enemies, swift and hard, and finish what he started.

The Builders wears its influences proudly, drawing on the best traditions of the Western and, most of all, on the films of Akira Kurasawa. If nothing else, the fact that the band numbers seven should provide a strong indication of where the characters' roots lie. The Captain's great rival, Mephetic, is easily imagined as a corrupt sherriff, with his own troupe of supporters more interested in causing trouble and settling scores than keeping the peace.

The story is beautifully structured, with a series of flashbacks introducing each character as they arrive at the bar for the initial briefing. The action then proceeds forward as the Captain sets his plan in motion. There are reverses and set-backs and deaths along the way but finally, in the closing moments of the story, we finally learn the bitter meaning behind the cryptic title.