A fevered post-apocalyptic yarn heavier on philosophical meanderings than survivalist thrills.
The apparent sole human remaining in a future western America depopulated by war, plague, and eco-collapse comes across the writings of a fellow survivor in Koszulinski’s SF novel.
Jane Ballard, born in 2055, is the lonely survivor of an apocalyptic dystopia beset by climate horror, famine, genocide, and war. She’s a Marine Corps veteran of the secessionist California Republic of some 15 liberal-minded states—they were supposedly the good guys, but Jane understands that propaganda was rampant, so who knows? Also rampant: a mysterious contagion, Virus (x), which delivered the final blow, wiping out almost every human on Earth, plus dogs and cats. Jane wanders the West, seeking others still alive. In Arizona, she discovers “Dead Man”—the mummified corpse of a former U.S. government “archeopsychic extractor” (torturer) who evidently walked unprotected into the daytime heat to expire. Dead Man’s journals and hideaway in a book-filled disused motel send Jane into reveries about civilization’s ultimate downfall, when “the feed” (read: internet) extirpated words on paper in favor of an ever-changing, AI-dominated miasma of illusion, fake-news hoaxes, and alienating virtual sex (even bisexual Jane partook), undermining the basics of humanity. (“It was not Virus (x) or the endless ecological perils, it was the dissolution of a shared reality that brought about collapse.”) Dead Man’s ghostly diatribes haunt Jane, even after she stumbles on tangible evidence in Taos of other holdouts. With a wobbly back-and-forth chronology and breakaway asides, the narrative feels more manifestolike than other dire post-holocaust Robinsonades and examples of “prepper” fiction. The text employs almost-experimental free verse (“Transformation, transformation, transformation. We are not the wardens. War crimes end-of-times? We are the shepherds leading the sheep on the path of enlightenment. Touch the light with your burning bodies”) to ruminate on religion, guilt, machine-intelligence limitations, wealth inequality, habitat loss, and the overarching need for community. The tale is by turns provocative and frustrating as its hero pursues her foggy goal.
A fevered post-apocalyptic yarn heavier on philosophical meanderings than survivalist thrills.Pub Date: today
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2025
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
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A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.
A novelist tries to adapt to her ever changing reality as her world slowly disappears.
Renowned Japanese author Ogawa (Revenge, 2013, etc.) opens her latest novel with what at first sounds like a sinister fairy tale told by a nameless mother to a nameless daughter: “Long ago, before you were born, there were many more things here…transparent things, fragrant things…fluttery ones, bright ones….It’s a shame that the people who live here haven’t been able to hold such marvelous things in their hearts and minds, but that’s just the way it is on this island.” But rather than a twisted bedtime story, this depiction captures the realities of life on the narrator's unnamed island. The small population awakens some mornings with all knowledge of objects as mundane as stamps, valuable as emeralds, omnipresent as birds, or delightful as roses missing from their minds. They then proceed to discard all physical traces of the idea that has disappeared—often burning the lifeless ones and releasing the natural ones to the elements. The authoritarian Memory Police oversee this process of loss and elimination. Viewing “anything that fails to vanish when they say it should [as] inconceivable,” they drop into homes for inspections, seizing objects and rounding up anyone who refuses—or is simply unable—to follow the rules. Although, at the outset, the plot feels quite Orwellian, Ogawa employs a quiet, poetic prose to capture the diverse (and often unexpected) emotions of the people left behind rather than of those tormented and imprisoned by brutal authorities. Small acts of rebellion—as modest as a birthday party—do not come out of a commitment to a greater cause but instead originate from her characters’ kinship with one another. Technical details about the disappearances remain intentionally vague. The author instead stays close to her protagonist’s emotions and the disorientation she and her neighbors struggle with each day. Passages from the narrator’s developing novel also offer fascinating glimpses into the way the changing world affects her unconscious mind.
A quiet tale that considers the way small, human connections can disrupt the callous powers of authority.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-101-87060-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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