A giant snapping turtle in a Canadian lake. There have been books about giant and out-of-place animals going amok, and rending and tearing their way through the human populations of a specific area for many years. Most of them are irritatingly formulaic, and can be dismissed fairly easily.

This book takes the genre into exciting new realms, and I can confidently predict that it is going to be immensely popular. It is far more philosophical, and indeed deep, than most books of this genre and cries out for a sequel.