Reviewed:
Catman has another winner with The Dirt Daubers. There isn't much sex. Food porn describes cooking and eating meals. Gun porn talks about various weapons and ammunition and their use. Well now there is earthmoving equipment porn in this story covering bulldozers, graders, bob cats, trailers, and a wide variety of other equipment and how it is used and maintained. I wonder if Lubrican has written a story about Bob cats?
There are real characters who get real jobs done. Its interesting and I liked it.
It flows like other Catman stories. Like an avalanche of information that just keeps going and going like the energizer bunny. Its shorter than his other stories, only two chapters. It is going to lead to another story with these characters that will be set in Belize, where his other (boat) stories were set, mostly.
Lets do the numbers. Plot is an 8, excellent, an A in my grading system. I am not sure I am on top of everything that happened, and it was only two chapters. I liked the characters, and there are plenty of them. Technical Quality is an 8, excellent, an A the way I score things.
Appeal to reviewer is, surprise, another 8. There has been some discussion on the Forum about Catman's approach to reader criticism, basically he is against it. I suggest you don't email him if you didn't like it. If you do, he probably will ask why did you read it? He told us not to.
I think you will like it if you read it, unless you found his earlier stories didn't appeal to you. This is the same sort of thing he wrote before but without the boats.