A Gothic dystopian fantasy that sidesteps the genre’s conventions and tidy endings.
A hard-bitten band of survivors struggles to retain its humanity in an electricity-starved America.
Epps’ novel deftly avoids the standard issue tropes that have defined dystopian fiction for over 50 years, like barren urban deserts, mutant vampires, zombie slaughterfests, or some type of elaborate autocratic scenario. As the novel opens, Antonio “Ant” Hobbes finds himself struggling to navigate a landscape “where cars were rarely observed like endangered species,” making it necessary to walk, or ride on horseback, alongside highways now barren of traffic. It’s an unpredictable, dangerously arbitrary world in which an uncontrolled pandemic rages through Southeast Asia, groceries rot in refrigerators and on ransacked shelves, and vermin run rampant, “feeding on the remaining, festering foodstuffs.” The existing political order collapses into warring confederations, which wreak havoc on everything and everyone else. During Ant’s travels and struggles for survival, he meets others, including Charlie and Roland, a gay couple; Jenna and her husband, Jeremy, a battle-scarred veteran haunted by his experiences of fighting an invasion of Taiwan; and Mina, a lonely woman trying (and failing) to manage a massive home with gas-powered generators and rainwater collected in barrels. This steady drumbeat of human misery unfolds through North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, where Charlie and Roland are hoping to strike a longer-term resolution of their problems with Rathausen, a feudal warlord who may not actually exist. This smaller-scale apocalypse feels well removed from the wider-screen imagery in films like Escape From New York but at the same time more realistic.
Epps ably explores the theme of ordinary people trying to retain their humanity against improbably long odds and in a world gone haywire. For Ant, the ultimate test of that resolve comes in the form of a murderous, psychotic ring of thugs led by the fittingly named Harlan Butcher, a self-proclaimed “eater of men” and “consumer of towns,” who’s also hellbent on enslaving Ant, with whom he has a history, and his companions. If Ant accepts a devil’s bargain, Butcher will allow him to live, and he’ll also forgo a vicious settling of an old debt. The author does a fine job of plumbing the nitty-gritty nuances and backstory of the unthinkable trade that Butcher demands. And it’s an outcome that will keep readers guessing right until the final page. The prose matches the characters’ moods, ranging from terse and resigned (“Hope hobbled along”) to jarringly graphic, as when Jenna helps her husband fend off a band of vagrants (“Killing had come more naturally than she would have imagined”). All the author’s tight-knit pacing and plotting, however, feels undercut by an ending that doesn’t offer easy answers or clarity. Is the author priming readers for a sequel or an ongoing franchise? All in all, it’s a worthy read, although whether the last-minute ambiguity is an unwelcome feature, or merely a bug, will come down to preference.
A Gothic dystopian fantasy that sidesteps the genre’s conventions and tidy endings.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2025
ISBN: 9789699392672
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Mess Hall Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.
A widowed and disgraced plastic surgeon is drawn into a Russian oligarch’s evil schemes.
Witherspoon’s adult fiction debut, co-authored with thrillermeister Coben, opens as heart surgery performed by Dr. Marc Adams in a North African refugee camp is interrupted by the explosive invasion of armed militants. It's the last we will see of Marc in this dimension. The next chapter jumps ahead one year to a ceremony at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore where his widow, Maggie McCabe, is supposed to be presenting an award in honor of her mother. Miserable and anxious about appearing in public after having lost her medical license, she consults with her late husband on her phone—not via supernatural means, but using a "griefbot," an amazingly lifelike and functional AI app created by her genius sister, Sharon. Once the griefbot coaxes her to brave the sneering masses, she learns she’s been replaced on the podium anyway. But she runs into a former professor, a celebrity plastic surgeon, who requests a meeting with her at his office in New York and won’t take no for an answer. Next thing she knows, there’s $10 million in her bank account and she’s on a private plane heading to a palace outside Moscow where she’s been engaged to perform off-the-record surgery on billionaire Oleg Ragoravich (new face) and his girlfriend, Nadia (new boobs). And…we’re off. A whirl of surgeries, chases, and escapes ensues as Maggie gradually comes to understand who these people are and what they have in mind for her, and how it connects to Marc and their missing friend and business partner, Trace Packer. She is aided by her delightful father-in-law, Porkchop, owner of a biker bar in New York City and a very handy guy to have on your team if you've run afoul of an international criminal organization. From the palace in Rublevka the action moves to Dubai and then Bordeaux, climaxing in a high-stakes illegal heart transplant. But wait—is Marc really dead? What happened to Trace? Who is Nadia really? Though these smoldering questions don’t quite catch fire, it's a good first try for Witherspoon.
Maybe not the most thrilling thriller, but the role of AI in coping with grief gives this novel pathos and interest.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781538774700
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.
Robots may be the future of warfare in this final father-son DeMille collaboration.
In Camp Hayden, Army Maj. Roger Ames is found dead, his skull crushed. Chief Warrant Officers Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor, special agents of the United States Army Criminal Investigation Division, are sent to the Mojave Desert, “a.k.a. in the middle of nowhere,” to investigate. In this fictional military installation, Army Rangers conduct field training exercises with lethal autonomous weapons. These “dangerous new toys,” nicknamed “tin men,” may become the future of warfare if they can be programmed to distinguish between friend and foe. Anyway, the Rangers’ job is to train the tin men, not the other way around. They are AI-driven robotic prototypes called D-17s, but even prototypes can kill. Did a bot kill the major? And was there criminal liability or intent, or was it a tragic accident? Brodie and Taylor discover that not everyone loves these beasts, and they must find out if humans are programming them for mischief or even trying to set up the program for failure. Meanwhile, the bots have nicknames. Bot number 20 is Bucky, seen on a video as a “seven-foot-tall titanium machine with hands covered in blood and brain matter” that has “a face but no eyes, with hands but no skin, with a body but no soul.” As scary as these beasties are, Brodie and Taylor must also look at the humans at Camp Hayden, because they learn that the “machines don’t have motives….They have inputs and outputs,” which naturally come from human programmers. They have neither brains nor courage nor honor; they do have brute force, speed, and agility. Obviously, plenty goes haywire in this enjoyable yarn. It feels a bit too believable for comfort, and that’s to the DeMilles’ credit as storytellers. Nelson DeMille had begun this project with his son Alex, who had to finish it alone after his father’s death.
Fast-moving and disturbingly plausible.Pub Date: Oct. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781501101878
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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