American Hippo

Sarah Gailey
Completed 9/6/2026, Reviewed 9/8/2026
3 stars

This is a collection of novellas set in an alternative America where feral hippos rule the bayou.  It’s based on an actual bill presented to Congress to bring the African hippo to the US as an alternative meat source.  The novellas read a little like wild west tales but with antiheroes; no one is simply a good guy or a bad guy.  Even the hippos are morally grey; some are good and domesticated; others are feral and fierce.  It makes for a fun and interesting read.  

The first novella introduces us to a motley crew of people on the edge of the law, led by Winslow Houndstooth, a “hopper” hired to round up the feral hippos in the Louisiana delta area and gather them into a large lake.  This would keep them from spreading along the Mississippi and disrupting trade and transportation.  In this alt-America, Congress and the president passed the bill to import the hippos for meat and domestication but failed to take into account how feral and dangerous they can get.  So Houndstooth gathers together a team of rough folks, a nod to the Seven Samurai, to undertake this mission.  There are several other subplots going on amidst this.  A US Marshall is looking for one of the hippo hunters who is wanted for murder.  He also has a long-standing relationship with one of the other hunters.  They’ve kept it secret since they are basically on opposite sides of the law.  Between this hunt and the not so random hippo attacks, Houndstooth’s team struggles to complete their mission.  The second novella continues the story where more is revealed.  There are also two short stories and a timeline of hippos in America which add some background color to the novellas.  

I didn’t get a tight connection with any of the characters.  There were just too many of them for lengths of the stories.  I also had issues with the names of the characters.  There were two women on the team, one named Adelia and the other Archie, violating the unwritten rule of giving your characters names that begin with different letters of the alphabet to help keep them from being confused.  They both have accents, Adelia being Latina and Archie being French.  Her full name is Regina Archambault.  At least Adelia is pregnant which helps differentiate them a bit.  In addition, there was a domesticated hippo named Abagail.  So there’s three A names.  Then there’s Houndstooth and Hero, the latter being a non-binary love interest of Houndstooth.  Lastly there are two hippos named Rosa and Ruby.  Yeah, it gets confusing quickly.

Houndstooth is almost likable.  He’s a native Brit, transplanted here to wrangle hippos.  I had to smile when he hooked up with the blue-eyed federal agent who hired him.  As he tells his hippo Ruby, he can’t say no to those blue-eyed boys.  But he’s clearly fluid in that he later develops feelings for his non-binary associate, Hero.  Even though I liked him in the first novella, he goes a bit crazy in the second when the team is split.  I didn’t feel the slow transformation into crazed desperation to get Hero back.  It felt out of character for him.  

The world building in this collection is pretty good.  I did feel like I was awkwardly riding hippos in the swampy marshes in the bayou.  And I really liked the short story about the cost of getting Ruby’s cracked horns (long, protruding teeth) fixed.  There is some humor sprinkled throughout.  Overall, I’d say it’s a fun book, even if it’s a little more serious than your standard fluff.  What stood out for me was the conviction with which the author wrote.  I could almost believe this was an historical novel versus alt-history.  But I give this book a middlin’ three stars out of five because I felt immersed in the stories’ details, but not the main characters.  I think I would also have enjoyed a little more focus on the hippos, rather than being just the background plot for the human interaction.