# Can anybody help me remember what book this is!?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anybody-help-me-remember-what-book-this-is/444290
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [April 7, 2008, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anybody-help-me-remember-what-book-this-is/444290 "2008-04-07T06:52:07Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@basser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/basser)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anybody-help-me-remember-what-book-this-is/444290/1 "2008-04-07T06:52:07Z")
I have been trying to remember the title of this book for literally _days_ and can’t for the life of me remember. It’s especially vexing because it sounds like a really interesting book, and now that I’ve been reminded of it I really want to read it again, but can’t if I don’t know the name! I’ve been searching through google, library catalogs, book searches… Anything I can think of but nothing rings a bell.
**Here’s what I remember plot-wise:** (Warning: some of this is really, really strange. Please bear with me.)
-At some point a genetically-enhanced, talking weasel attacks the main character, trying to assassinate him with an extremely powerful gun. The main character manages to cut the weasel/ferret’s head off and glues it to a plate which he then carries around. (The weasel lives for a few hours because of the genetic enhancements and he forces the head-on-a-plate to tell him where its master is.)
-These “super weasels” work as some sort of police force.
-The person who made the weasel is a guy who also makes a lot of genetically enhanced animals, I think illegally. He is old, I think, and there is something about very small monkeys.
-Eventually the main character finds his way to a vast underground sea, where the antagonist lives on a giant genetically enhanced fish which is slowly rotting away from the inside. There is a large city built in the fish’s mouth for some reason.
-I believe the main character lives in some sort of slum, or travels there for some reason.
Does any of that ring a bell, or even make some sort of sense? I was thinking maybe it might be the novel “Mute” by Piers Anthony, but the summary I found doesn’t sound a thing like what I’m thinking of.
This is probably something I read before or just after Y2K, which explains why I can’t remember much of it (I was only twelve!). If you can help me put this nagging memory to rest, I would be SO grateful! Besides from what I remember it was pretty interesting, maybe we can all take a read. 🙂
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### Author:  [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anybody-help-me-remember-what-book-this-is/444290/2 "2008-04-07T09:20:20Z")
Alan Dean Foster did a series of books involving anthropomorphic animals called [Spellsinger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spellsinger), and there’s a whole bunch of books in that story. I can only barely remember the first one, and none of your specific plot points match my memories, but it’s somewhere to start.
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### Author:  [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anybody-help-me-remember-what-book-this-is/444290/3 "2008-04-07T13:27:07Z")
I don’t think the OP is describing _Spellsinger_. (I used to love those books). The \*Spellsinger \*world was magic, with no mention of genetic enhancement. And the police force was composed of skunks, not weasels. 🙂
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### Author:  [@basser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/basser)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anybody-help-me-remember-what-book-this-is/444290/4 "2008-04-07T17:06:28Z")
Thanks for responding… Other forums have blown be off entirely. xD;
Yeah, Spellsinger does sound more like a magical world, from the descriptions I found. My mysterious book was very dark, everything was done by science. The weasel and other mutated animals of his ilk were described with something like horror, I believe.
Also, if it helps, I remember my mother describing the book as something people read for college for literature classes, something about representing the technological corruption of the human species and playing god. (Again I was twelve at the time so I wasn’t a great listener. I was a precocious reader, however, so this book is definitely an adult fiction, college level at least. It was not particularly child-friendly.)
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_Ecks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ecks)
#### Post date: [April 7, 2008, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-anybody-help-me-remember-what-book-this-is/444290/5 "2008-04-07T18:36:53Z")
Veniss Underground by Jeff Vandermeer.