THE SAW MOUTH

Danger stalks one small town after a technological apocalypse.

The end of the known world came 10 years ago, in a global event called Autumn. Advanced technology gained tortured sentience, “woke up in pain,” and was mostly destroyed. With their mother dead and their father and brother long disappeared, white, 18-year-old nonbinary Cedar goes to the small town of Sawblade Lake, where their father is from and their grandmother still lives. Before they even get to town, they’re menaced by a shadowy, inhuman figure and threatened at gunpoint by Morgyn, a girl they quickly become attracted to. The monster—which seems to have complex and mysterious connections to Cedar—follows them to Sawblade, wreaking havoc on their newly formed community that consists of teens who are mostly white and who include a variety of gender identities. Cedar, along with girlfriend Lucy (who’s trans) and new friend Ada (whose pronouns are she/they and who has “obscenely pretty eyes”) must track the creature down after it possesses Ada’s little sister, Ruby. The novel offers an interesting take on the future dystopia genre and the attendant bigger ideas about how we use technology and what that use might take from us. Unfortunately, the urgent pace doesn’t always progress the plot, leaving the story spinning its wheels, and the breathless, flowery prose can feel more melodramatic than moving.

A carefully drawn, if uneven, queer-normative story.