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Song of Earth #0
Cat Karina
Few true humans remain on the future Earth, where caimen, shrugleggers, and felinas dominate. The people are descendents of crocodiles, alien races, and jaguars, and they are much different than the humans--they are products of genetic experiments created to perform specific functions. Some work in the swampy lands, others are the strong burden-bearers, but none are as beautiful as the felines-not even the humans. And no one is worthy enough to win over the most attractive felina, Karina. She is a rare beauty of great prowess, with a tempting sculpted physique that could lure anyone to her.
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
6 people are currently reading
102 people want to read
About the author
Michael G. Coney
120 books27 followersMichael Greatrex Coney was born in Birmingham, England and educated at King Edward's School.
He started a career as a chartered accountant and went on to become a management Consultant. Then he went into the catering business, managing an inn in south Devon with his wife, Daphne for three years and a hotel in the West Indies for another three. He worked for Financial Services in the B.C. Forest Service for seventeen years before retiring .
He Passed away 4 November 2005. peacefully of Cancer (Mesothelioma). He was married with three children and lived on Vancouver Island.
He started a career as a chartered accountant and went on to become a management Consultant. Then he went into the catering business, managing an inn in south Devon with his wife, Daphne for three years and a hotel in the West Indies for another three. He worked for Financial Services in the B.C. Forest Service for seventeen years before retiring .
He Passed away 4 November 2005. peacefully of Cancer (Mesothelioma). He was married with three children and lived on Vancouver Island.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 24, 2025
Cat Karina is the first published of an eventual five novels that Coney wrote in a series known as The Song of Earth. I thought this one was mildly entertaining but wasn't impressed enough to read any of the others. The setting and situation were interesting, but the pacing was quite slow. It's set far in the future and features descendants of genetically manipulated cats and crocodiles and some other animals and some aliens and some humans... Karina is a felina, descended from jaguars. I don't remember it with great clarity but remember thinking that Coney was trying to do what Cordwainer Smith had already done but wasn't as successful. The Walter Velez cover of the first Ace printing doesn't really seem to have anything much to do with the book.
November 10, 2011
"Happentracks" just kind of works and stays with you, you know? It's a word that should be added to our dictionary :)
February 11, 2018
I love cats. I like some humans. I do not like cat-humans as portrayed by Coney.
There are so many things not to like. The story was boring and forgettable. Sometimes when I'm reading, I'm so not engaged and I forget what I just read. That happened at least once per page with this book. I'm going to have a tough time discussing this gem at book club because I've already forgotten half of the plot. To be honest, I'd forgotten the first half of the book by the time I made it to the last half.
Plus so many things made no sense. Note: maybe some of the following was actually explained in the book, but I was too bored to pay attention and notice. Where, exactly, did Cat Karina take place? I gathered it's somewhere on earth a billion-jillion years in the future, but I couldn't be sure. Why was there so much conflict between the different Specialists, or humans with various animal genes? This was never explained. And why oh why did no one use metal? Because some God-type being told them not to? Come on, that's completely implausible.
If you want to read a book about cats, just read I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats. I mean, I've never actually read it, but it's got to be better than Cat Karina.
There are so many things not to like. The story was boring and forgettable. Sometimes when I'm reading, I'm so not engaged and I forget what I just read. That happened at least once per page with this book. I'm going to have a tough time discussing this gem at book club because I've already forgotten half of the plot. To be honest, I'd forgotten the first half of the book by the time I made it to the last half.
Plus so many things made no sense. Note: maybe some of the following was actually explained in the book, but I was too bored to pay attention and notice. Where, exactly, did Cat Karina take place? I gathered it's somewhere on earth a billion-jillion years in the future, but I couldn't be sure. Why was there so much conflict between the different Specialists, or humans with various animal genes? This was never explained. And why oh why did no one use metal? Because some God-type being told them not to? Come on, that's completely implausible.
If you want to read a book about cats, just read I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats. I mean, I've never actually read it, but it's got to be better than Cat Karina.
April 10, 2017
Not much in this book of any redeeming value. It is an exceedingly clumsy and ill-conceived piece of writing that never gets any kind of compelling story going.
Cat Karina is the first of I believe five books set in this same world. It is populated by "true" humans (i.e. normal people) as well as people that have genes of various animals spliced into them, hence "Cat" Karina. There are also crocodile people, llama people, and others. People live primitively, with some long past event apparently having wiped out most technological advancements.
One major problem plaguing the book is the near total absence of effective world building. We learn almost nothing about why anything in this world is the way it is. Instead, things are just sort tossed at the reader helter skelter. There is some powerful being that lives in space that is part of the plot somehow, but we learn virtually nothing about it? The tumps? Why are there still working railroad tracks when there is almost nothing else in the world (I mean, they don't even use metal?)?
Then there is the unexplained tensions between the different human-ish groups and an extended political allegory of some kind that is just very tedious.
I never came to care at all about any of the characters in the book, who are largely interchangeable. The whole thing has a very half-assed feel. One hilarious blurb on the back cover of my version of the book was from the Encyclopedia of Science fiction, who called Coney one of the most prolific SF authors of the 1970s. I guess that is praise?
Last point: my version of the book had a cover that I would have been deeply embarrassed if anyone had seen me reading, since it made the novel look like softcore pornography (which it is not--maybe it would have been better if it was.). So careful of what edition you are buying if you do purchase this silly and boring novel.
Cat Karina is the first of I believe five books set in this same world. It is populated by "true" humans (i.e. normal people) as well as people that have genes of various animals spliced into them, hence "Cat" Karina. There are also crocodile people, llama people, and others. People live primitively, with some long past event apparently having wiped out most technological advancements.
One major problem plaguing the book is the near total absence of effective world building. We learn almost nothing about why anything in this world is the way it is. Instead, things are just sort tossed at the reader helter skelter. There is some powerful being that lives in space that is part of the plot somehow, but we learn virtually nothing about it? The tumps? Why are there still working railroad tracks when there is almost nothing else in the world (I mean, they don't even use metal?)?
Then there is the unexplained tensions between the different human-ish groups and an extended political allegory of some kind that is just very tedious.
I never came to care at all about any of the characters in the book, who are largely interchangeable. The whole thing has a very half-assed feel. One hilarious blurb on the back cover of my version of the book was from the Encyclopedia of Science fiction, who called Coney one of the most prolific SF authors of the 1970s. I guess that is praise?
Last point: my version of the book had a cover that I would have been deeply embarrassed if anyone had seen me reading, since it made the novel look like softcore pornography (which it is not--maybe it would have been better if it was.). So careful of what edition you are buying if you do purchase this silly and boring novel.
January 7, 2023
It's a reluctant "liked it" because it felt like so much of the first half or two thirds is spent meandering. It improves through the rest once it decides that the story at hand has priority--the relationship of the Specialists to the True Humans and how the conflict erupts and plays out--and the matters of Happentracks and future history and so forth are background material that exist at the thematic level and shouldn't form digressions. The parts where it tries to be cosmic and new-wave experimental land with a thud.
August 7, 2020
I'm not a cat person so it's probably just as well the felinos and felinas don't act like cats. I loved the writing in this book when I read it in the late seventies and it really pulled me into the story. For me it was written with a great deal of imagination. It serves as a good taster for the epic Song Of Earth series.
June 19, 2021
Nope. Nope. Nope.
I can't read another ill-formed sentence. Unreadable.
Story: 0 stars
Character Dev: 0 stars
Prose/Language: 0 stars
I can't read another ill-formed sentence. Unreadable.
Story: 0 stars
Character Dev: 0 stars
Prose/Language: 0 stars
July 9, 2018
While this will not win any prizes, it was a fun, light read. I believe there are several sequals to this but I am not eagerly tracking them down. Dispite the lurid cover, this is not soft porn!
January 26, 2025
First off….if you haven’t already read Celestial Steam Locomotive and Gods of the Greataway, you shouldn’t read this book!
Based on many reviews, it seems a lot of people picked this up cold. Which is crazy.
If you have read the others, this is a charming story. It’s narrow in scope, unlike the others, which I find unfortunate since the grand sweeping history of the others was very appealing.
Based on many reviews, it seems a lot of people picked this up cold. Which is crazy.
If you have read the others, this is a charming story. It’s narrow in scope, unlike the others, which I find unfortunate since the grand sweeping history of the others was very appealing.
May 13, 2018
I have owned this book for 30 years and read it over and over but this is the first time I've pulled it out and wondered if there is more to the story... so I enjoyed it again and will see if I can find a sequel to the story somewhere to read.
January 26, 2025
Recent Rereads: Cat Karina. The first of Michael Coney's Greataway novels, this is an almost forgotten Dying Earth tale. In a far future, somewhere what was South America, an alien god is manipulating remnant humans and uplifts so it can return to the stars. Will a sail train race set things right?
January 8, 2012
"It started with a few bards and minstrels . . . they used their eyes and ears, listened to rumors and legends and dying old men. And they used their imagination and their essential humanness. With these ingredients they created a whole new history of Mankind; a tapestry of events which was passed on by word of mouth - and so could never become dull, inflexible or accurate. It is called the Song of Earth."
This is a legend of future earth, set somewhere in Latin America at a time when the uneasy but stable co-existence of true humans and specialists (humans with animal genes) is threatened by the reintroduction of metal-working. Events are shaped by the machinations of Starquin, an imprisoned alien, who is using his knowledge of the happentracks (alternate futures) to try to effect his release. In this story Starquin is trying to ensure that Karina, a jaguar-descended felina girl, bears the child of a true human, since one of their descendants will play a part in his release.
I liked the descriptions of felina society, the sailtracks and the kikihuahua examples, but unfortunately I found that the continual reminders that Karina's story is one of the legends that make up The Song of Earth kept breaking the spell of the story
This is a legend of future earth, set somewhere in Latin America at a time when the uneasy but stable co-existence of true humans and specialists (humans with animal genes) is threatened by the reintroduction of metal-working. Events are shaped by the machinations of Starquin, an imprisoned alien, who is using his knowledge of the happentracks (alternate futures) to try to effect his release. In this story Starquin is trying to ensure that Karina, a jaguar-descended felina girl, bears the child of a true human, since one of their descendants will play a part in his release.
I liked the descriptions of felina society, the sailtracks and the kikihuahua examples, but unfortunately I found that the continual reminders that Karina's story is one of the legends that make up The Song of Earth kept breaking the spell of the story
July 2, 2013
Admittedly, I tried to read this book when I was a lot younger. I kept getting lost in the profuse amount of jargon in the first few pages. I decided it was above my reading level and that I would set it on the shelf for a few years and try to read it again. I did so, and still was turned off by the all of the slang terms. I get that timetravel would be confusing, and that the lingo used by those who do it constantly would be very confusing to someone unused to the concept of timetravel, but I feel like there are ways to get that across without entirely losing the reader like this book did with me the few times I tried to read it. I needed something to get me interested in the characters or the setting or something before overloading me with jargon, and I didn't find it.
June 8, 2009
La force de ce livre est la dimension « humain ». Plusieurs espèces nées de manipulations génétiques se partagent un monde aux étranges allures. Notre action se situe dans un Brésil particulier où les personnages se croisent et créent une formidable tapisserie d’actions et d’émotions. Michael Coney nous offre également un nouveau principe narratif selon lequel il est possible d’entr’apercevoir les différentes vies qu’auraient été celles des personnages. Comment ne pas entrer dans cet univers complexe et tellement intrigant ?
Science Fiction monde parallèle
Science Fiction monde parallèle
September 24, 2015
read 2010
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews