Plot: 4/9. This is quite a bland yet elaborate story full of motions and emotions.

Our heroine was an white dog chasing her Jaxan for pelt on the planet Jaxa. But she was discombobulated weather to call her master for Jaxan resembled intelligence. It even tried to persuade her to escape from slavery before its quick disappearance.

She ultimately led her owner to kill it. The master left head behind and only took the fur.

When they were back, she saw another Jaxan again who persuaded her to liberate herself. The master let it go and they found the remains of that Jaxan was lying in their way intentionally.

Beside their ship were nine Jaxan. Master gave back Jaxan’s fur but Jaxan rejected. Instead, they even added a heavy package and demanded him to leave immediately. For the last time, they asked her to stay with them but she didn’t understand fully their meaning.

The package they bequeathed was their mate’s remains.

Core: 1/9. I don’t understand why Jaxan let him go rather than revenge. Why did Master surrender immediately since he had more advanced weapons than Jaxans? What did both sides think? Did the master repent? Will other humans do the same thing to Jaxans? Then how would Jaxans deal with more greedy human next time?

It’s clever to use the perspective of a dog, for Emshwiller could easily blind the reader with only actions of characters rather than intentions, and therefore didn’t need to write more details like core, characters and world building.

In brief, I would give a higher score if the conflict would be more blazing.

Character: 1/9. Again, the characters here were mainly tools without soul.

World and Others: 1/9. Were there any differences between the forest of Jaxa and the one of the Earth?

Overall: 2/9. Maybe Emshwiller was a good writer, but not my cup of tea unfortunately. Her lack of world-building disgusted me.