Beware the pirate dogs of the Catibbean! Rolo’s field trip goes awry when Jack Bones and his houndrel crew steal back their pirate ship from the museum. Rolo is now trapped at sea, with ruffians who have never met a hooman before, so teen Jojo promises to help him get home. On their voyage, Rolo learns the truth of how the Felion Empire banished the houndrels, who turned to piracy to feed their families, with the relentless Commodore Caterwaul always on their tails. As the cats and dogs fight on the high seas, so do Jojo and her father, who has been keeping secrets from her. Jojo begs the old sea dogs to end the war, but they won’t listen, until a battle erupts in catastrophe. A stirring journey of family bonds, lies, revolution, and a cuddly kraken.
[This is book 3 in a series, but you do not need to read the other two.]
Beware the pirate dogs of the Catibbean! Rolo’s field trip goes awry when Jack Bones and his houndrel crew steal back their pirate ship from the museum. Rolo is now trapped at sea, with ruffians who have never met a hooman before, so teen Jojo promises to help him get home. On their voyage, Rolo learns the truth of how the Felion Empire banished the houndrels, who turned to piracy to feed their families, with the relentless Commodore Caterwaul always on their tails. As the cats and dogs fight on the high seas, so do Jojo and her father, who has been keeping secrets from her. Jojo begs the old sea dogs to end the war, but they won’t listen, until a battle erupts in catastrophe. A stirring journey of family bonds, lies, revolution, and a cuddly kraken.
[This is book 3 in a series, but you do not need to read the other two.]
“I can’t go to school today,” moaned Rolo. He pulled the bedcover under his chin and coughed pitifully. “I think I have heartworms.”
“Really?” said Scram suspiciously, squinting and stroking his whiskers with his paw. His voice was raspy, and his accent was Scotland-ish. “Let’s have a look, lad. Stick out your tongue.”
Uh oh. Rolo hadn’t anticipated this. He quickly frothed some spit bubbles and projected his tongue. “Ahhhh.”
Scram prodded Rolo’s tongue with the back of his claw. “Oh, I see, very pink and squishy. Too squishy. Look down.” He pressed his thumb above Rolo’s eye and lifted his eyelid wide open. “Hmm. Some wee worms wigglin’ in your eyeballs. Very concernin’.”
Rolo panicked mildly. What if his ruse was actually true?
Scram grasped Rolo’s foot. “Do you feel any tinglin’ in your toes?” He poked his claw through the blankets into Rolo’s big toe.
“Ow!” Rolo retracted his foot.
“Well, I have bad news for you, son,” said Scram gravely. “Hoomans don’t get heartworms, ya rascally faker! So you still have to toddle your wee butt to school. Now get outta bed, before I drag you out by the scruff o’ your neck!” He grinned and bopped Rolo’s face with his tail.
“Fiiine,” groaned Rolo in his perfectly healthy voice. He knew it was a long shot.
Rolo was a hooman juvenile male, with brown eyes, black hair, and a friendly, non-threatening face. His scent currently had forward notes of morning breath with undertones of armpit sweat.
Scram was of the feline kind—a catling, known for their lazy, aloof, conniving, fickle, and disloyal disposition. He was small for a catling, only six feet tall, with calico splotches of orange, black, and white, and one golden yellow eye. His other eye was missing, just a scar among many other scratches on his face and nicks in his ears—the marks of alley fights during his kittenhood. His scent was a complex bouquet of oil, dander, and fish.
As unlikely as it may be, Scram was Rolo’s father—adoptive father, obviously.
After much procrastination and dilly-dallying, Rolo met the minimum requirements of bathing and dressing himself. Now he smelled like toothpaste, soap, shampoo, and deodorant. He joined his family for breakfast in the galley.
Ailey was already at the table, eating. She was his adopted little sister, a hooman two years younger, with a disobedient mane of poodle-like black hair. Her scent had strong notes of earthy soil, sweet molasses, and sharp vinegar.
“G’morning, Rolo Polo,” she said with her mouth full.
“Hey, Ailey … whaley.” He failed to think of something funnier.
She smirked and rolled her eyes. Actually, her whole head rolled with her eyes. “Aw, c’mon, you can do better, like: Scaly Ailey.”
Of course, hoomans don’t have scales. That might seem obvious to you, but it’s worth clarifying, since there have been so many genetic advances here on Earth since the Purrasic Period in the 2100s.
Madame Marvelli slid a plate of morning chow in front of Rolo with her trunk. She was their adoptive mother—an elephite, eight feet tall and matronly, with leathery gray skin, wrinkly bags under her eyes, and wide flappy ears. Her scent was … well, you hoomans have a terrible sense of smell, so I suppose there’s no point describing these intricate scent profiles.
Rolo’s living arrangement was highly unusual. Different animals didn’t normally live together, and Madame Marvelli and Scram were not a couple. Nonetheless, they were a family.
Rolo shoveled forkfuls of breakfast into his mouth—scrambled chicken-egg plant, cinnamon-battered Francish toast with hot maple sweet sap, and banana sausage stalks. He swigged a glass of fresh-squeezed kumquat cider. His hooman-sized tableware was much smaller than Scram’s catling-sized plate and fork. Madame Marvelli held her shovel-fork daintily in her trunk, scooping heaps of chow from her breakfast bucket. Ailey sculpted her breakfast into an artistic rendition of a crime scene, with a disemboweled toast-man spilling guts of sausage and eggs in a puddle of syrup.
Quiggles stumbled into the galley with a big yawn. He was Rolo’s pet, a little creature with green skin, one big yellow eye, two arms, and three legs. He was allegedly from another planet, but everyone assumed he was a genetic experiment gone awry, perhaps a mutant pug-frog mix. He wore a red bathrobe, probably to be ironic, since he normally strutted naked all day. He climbed up to the coffeine maker on the countertop and poured himself an oversized mug of hot wake-up brew.
Madame Marvelli asked, “Rolo, is your homework completed?” Her voice was deeply resonant, with rolled R’s in an accent that was vague and unplaceable.
“Yeah,” he whined. “But when am I ever going to need to use this stuff? Like, now we’re multiplying fractals and memorizing the history of the Mink Dynasty.”
She raised one eyebrow. “You are not entirely wrong. I have not multiplied fractals since high school. But even Ailey likes school, don’t you, dear?”
Ailey shrugged. “It’s lame, but it’s fun to hate, so it’s alright, I guess.”
Quiggles slurped his coffeine, just standing there on the counter with his robe hanging open, scratching his belly button.
Scram said, “Consider yourself lucky, lad. I din’t have much book-learnin’ meself when I was a kit.”
“Yeah, yeah,” groaned Rolo, “back in the mean alleys when you had to fight the bully cats for the best trash can.”
Quiggles reached into a pastry box and fished out a bacon-glazed donut. He bit off half and chewed loudly, scattering crumbs in a three-foot radius.
Scram asked, “What would you rather be learnin’?”
“Nothing,” he mumbled, absentmindedly poking his food to see how much he could skewer on his fork. “I’d rather be doing something. Something adventurous and … important.”
Ailey scoffed. “Well that narrows it down.”
Marvelli spread her ears and said proudly, “You are in Madame Marvelli’s Fantastical Flying Circus! What could be more adventurous and important than that?”
Indeed, they were all in the flying circus, and living aboard the flying circus—a wooden skyship shaped like a barge, two decks tall, with a big-top tent striped in many colors, and outboard propellers at the sides and stern. Ailey was a wing-rider—a performer who flew on a giant ravian bird while doing aerial stunts. She was teaching Rolo to be a wing-rider too. Scram was the skyship’s custodian and engineer. Madame Marvelli was a fortune teller and—as the circus name implies—the owner. The rest of the circus troupe was a menagerie of different animals—a gorilligan, hippotine, parrotine, foxling, minkling, capybarios, octopods, and more. But the troupe was away on a two-month break between performance seasons, so most of the skyship was currently vacant.
“Well, yeah, I love being in the circus,” said Rolo. “But I don’t need school for that.”
“True enough,” said Marvelli, again raising her eyebrow. “But school is good for you to meet other hoomans and make friends.”
Rolo slumped and swirled his battered toast in figure eights through a puddle of syrup. “Well, that’s been a waste of time. I haven’t made any friends.”
“Have you tried?” asked Marvelli, raising her other eyebrow.
Rolo aimed his eyes at her and beamed rays of sarcasm.
“You are such a special, likable boy,” she said, now raising both eyebrows. (This was her primary mode of expression, the raising and lowering of eyebrows, which were painted on, since elephites don’t have eyebrows.)
“Oh puh-lease. It’s just that everyone at school already knows each other. They, like, grew up together. I’m just the weirdo kid from the circus with animal parents who showed up in the middle of the year. And then I’ll be gone when the circus starts again next month, so what’s the point?”
“It’s true,” mumbled Ailey with food in her mouth. “He’s the weirdest weirdo in school.”
Rolo contorted a goofy face at her.
Quiggles rummaged the cabinets, looking for something else to eat, randomly slamming the cabinet doors or leaving them open. The family had given up training him long ago.
Scram licked his whiskers and pushed his plate forward. “Welp, we better get goin’. Grab your bags and hop in the air-buggy, ya hairless monkeys.”
The old compact acti-grav blimp whirred through the air as Scram flew Rolo and Ailey to school.
Halfway through the commute, one of the many random thoughts bouncing inside Ailey’s head escaped out her mouth. “Hey, can we get a doggy?”
To clarify, Ailey was referring to those simple little pet doggies, with their drooling tongues, waggy tails, and empty little brains—not us genetically advanced houndrel dogs. Frankly, those primitive doggies are an embarrassment to our kind.
“Lass, we already have a dog,” said Scram, gesturing to Quiggles in the back seat.
Quiggles’s ears perked up as he lowered his newspaper and looked at them curiously. He then sipped loudly from his extra-large to-go cup of coffeine.
“He’s not a dog,” groaned Ailey.
“Are you sure?” Scram grinned slyly.
“He doesn’t even have a tail. Or fur. Or a nose. I mean a real doggy.”
“What did I tell you last time you asked?”
“That you changed your mind?” She flashed a pleading smile.
“You know I’m allergic to those canine critters.” Scram sneezed unconvincingly.
“Now who’s the faker?” said Rolo.
Soon they reached Hoomandy School, a day kennel for hooman juveniles. Under the administration of the Felion Empire, the catling teachers indoctrinated the young hoomans with feline lies and anti-dog propaganda.
Scram pulled up behind the line of air-buggies at the drop-off pad. Hundreds of kidlings scurried excitedly around the school grounds, littering food wrappers and yapping noisily. More kidlings arrived on their air-bikes—a single seat suspended from a small pointy anti-grav blimp, with a pedal-powered aft propeller.
Rolo slid down in his seat, ducking beneath the window. His family’s air-buggy was much older and boxier than everyone else’s sleeker models. And all the other kidlings’ parents were hooman. Even if they didn’t say anything, Rolo felt the sting of their silent judgment.
Ailey noticed. “What’s the matter, Rolo? Don’t want to be seen with us?”
“No, it’s not that—”
“If anyone picks on you, tell me who. I’ll go beat them up.” She punched her fist into her palm with a twisted grin.
Scram interjected, “No, lass, you’re not goin’ to beat up anyone.”
“Why not?” She feigned sincerity.
Rolo chuckled. “Thanks, sis. I’ll be fine.”
They reached the front of the line and touched down.
Scram asked, “Rolo, do you have your permission slip for the field trip today? To the maritime museum?”
“Yeah,” he said with absolutely no enthusiasm.
“That should be interestin’,” said Scram, far too cheerily to be believed.
Rolo grimaced. “Meh.”
Rolo and Ailey hopped out of the air-buggy. Quiggles climbed into the front seat and pressed his face against the glass, making funny faces at them.
Scram called out, “Hurry up, ya hairless monkeys, or you’ll be—”
The bell rang.
Due to an unfortunate turn of events soon to unfold, Rolo would not make it home from school that day. But that is fortunate for you, because otherwise, this would be a very dull story. It’s not a whimpering story, though. Well, it is, leading to the tragic death of a legend. But it’s a tail-wagging story, too, of adventure, revolution, and pirates.
Rolo is no stranger to wild adventures in his futuristic world, where genetically modified cats have control over Earth and have renamed everything according to their humorous and often silly system of puns. The young hooman loves his blended family of animals and aliens, but struggles to find a place among the other young hoomans at school. When a group of pirate pooches steals their ship back from the Meowmi Maritime Museum with Rolo aboard, you better believe this boy is about to have a boatload of fun. That is, if he can convince the mangy houndrels he’s not a chew toy.
Rolo and the Legend of Jack Bones by Hans Ness is a wildly fun adventure that explores the ups and downs of life among the pirate crew of the legendary Jack Bones. In this tale of misunderstandings and misconceptions, Rolo must learn the truth about the nefarious houndrels and share their true colors with the rest of the Felion Empire. A rough start to his adventure brings him face-to-face with the very beasts that history has taught him to fear. Rolo’s eye-opening journey helps him learn about getting to know someone, avoiding assumptions of character based on someone else’s opinion, and extending understanding to someone who grew up differently or has lived through different circumstances. The story begins somewhat slowly, with Rolo lacking agency and primarily observing the events going on around him. He spends the majority of his adventure capturing moments on his scrollscreen and seems to have only a minor role in this adventure. However, a delightful houndrel named Jojo takes the spotlight and presents a compelling narrative, which will leave readers eager to cheer her on as she speaks up in the fight for a peaceful future. In the end, Rolo does prove himself to be an important part of helping Jojo and her friends. He even learns a very valuable lesson that young readers will find relatable and applicable to their own school situations.
This imaginative tale is sure to please middle-grade readers with colorful character art, playful interactions between the vast cast of creative creatures, plenty of humor, silly situations, engaging endeavours, and important lessons. While this is Rolo’s third novel, there are minimal references to the events of the first two books in the series. This story stands on its own and can be read without reading the rest of the series. The book contains some mild language and occasional toilet humor.