A gut punch to the soul of America and a must-read for all those who value their freedom and future.
Ritchie’s debut novel—equal parts political thriller, dystopian narrative, and blood-soaked cautionary tale—looks ahead to “democracy’s last stand in America.”
Election Day is quickly approaching as two candidates with radically different agendas face off in a contest to become the 50th president of the United States. Charismatic Democratic senator Anna Hoffman, nicknamed the Lioness of Georgia, is leading in the polls, but Texas governor Mack Leach’s campaign, characterized by disinformation, racism, misogyny, violence, and blatant corruption, is narrowing the gap. The race is billed as “potentially the most consequential election in American history.” The country’s already murky future becomes even more muddied when popular news anchor Caitlin Kincaid is contacted by the Truth Chamber, a revolutionary AI-enhanced lie detector whose operators are abducting and interrogating potential enemies of the state. Lying to the Truth Chamber means escalating torture—and potentially death—via electric shocks. As hate-fueled violence sweeps the nation, the Georgia senator asks her old friend Admiral Liam Driscoll, who’s still struggling with the losses of his son and wife (to combat and brain cancer, respectively), for help with winning the election and saving the country from devolving into a fascist dictatorship. The novel’s impressively deep character development, breakneck pacing, and intricate plotlines are effectively complemented by unapologetically brutal violence and a disturbing sense of dread that builds throughout the narrative like an ever-thickening poisonous fog. Ritchie’s numerous (yet subtle) references to iconic songs and musicians are symbolically powerful, such as Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’” and the Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House,” to name a few. The biggest takeaway is the eerily prescient quality of the writing—readers may feel like they’ve found a history book from the future instead of a contemporary thriller: “When fascism comes to America, he’ll wear a flag pin, brandish a Bible, and call himself a patriot.”
A gut punch to the soul of America and a must-read for all those who value their freedom and future.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9781764538701
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A disarmingly heartfelt space adventure that dares to suggest genocide might be a bad business.
When a bunch of corporate assholes mark their planet for destruction, a garage band of colonists must defend their home world with the power of rock.
Slightly sidestepping his frenetic litRPG—literary role-playing game—doorstoppers, here Dinniman takes on capitalism, propaganda, xenophobia, and violence as entertainment. Thankfully for readers, it’s all wrapped in the usual profane, adolescent humor, and SF readers will have a ball. A couple of hundred years after they left Earth, the inhabitants of the interstellar colony of New Sonora weren’t expecting much in the way of new threats, especially after a mysterious illness killed almost everyone between the ages of 30 and 60. That disaster left only the young and the old on the populated planet, where farming is enabled by highly accelerated AI and people are generally cool with each other. But when drummer Oliver Lewis stumbles across a foul-mouthed killer mech piloted by a child, he realizes that something’s definitely fishy. Earth, it seems, has classified the New Sonorans as non-human and scheduled their destruction as a paid, five-day combat game. Apex Industries, led by lead mercenary Eli Opel, has reverse-engineered Ender’s Game and is turning loose its players with real bullets and bombs on the population of New Sonora. The resistance is a weird bunch, led by proto-slacker Oliver; his little sister, Lulu; and his ex-girlfriend, documentary filmmaker and burgeoning revolutionary Rosita Zapatero, as well as the other members of Oliver’s band, the Rhythm Mafia. Thankfully, they also have Roger, the last functioning AI on the planet, though Oliver’s grandfather permanently programmed it to nannybot mode as a dying joke. Call the book overlong—the battle scenes often feel like watching someone play a videogame—but the humor and the execution are cutting without being mean and there’s almost always a point.
A disarmingly heartfelt space adventure that dares to suggest genocide might be a bad business.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780593820308
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
