A tale of a languishing post-collapse world, expressed in fever-dream prose.
In Marebridge’s novel, set in a troubled future California, a young scavenger finds an incredible high-tech relic that could completely transform the world.
The setting is a dystopian Golden State, a century after a nuclear power disaster (and possibly a war) triggered the Rupture—a catastrophic release of radionuclides that ruined the environment and tainted the atmosphere with permanent soot. Atherion, a military-industrial corporatocracy, rules the state, and they’re not above occasionally murdering troublesome and unwanted civilians; its wealthy elites manage the weak, blighted crops. At the lowest tier of society are anarchic gangs and “hollows”: tent-city refugees scrounging for a living. Darca is a 10-year old girl from the Rocks Encampment who routinely ventures through the “brownfield” wastes of Sweet Water Valley for scrap to sell to middleman Andrés “Dru” Parada, who’s barely hanging on himself. Darca emerges from evacuated suburbs with the “cuboid,” a strange, featureless device that Dru can’t identify but finds compelling—especially after it extrudes nanotech filaments that interface with him. Meanwhile, the fearsome and powerful “aeon” Eve Pearl comes snooping around Dru’s shop; her unstable husband, Sonny, is floating a scheme to save the world by reviving nuclear power. Eve suspects that the government’s excuse that malfunctioning AI caused the Rupture is a lie. Marebridge treads in somewhat familiar post-eco-apocalypse territory, but he sidesteps survivalist tropes for something less obvious. These ruins are murky and dreamlike, and the third-person narrator’s voice is given to unlikely turns of phrase: “No words were exchanged between the four save for their eyes. Dru watched them go with a poignancy encasing his heart and reinforcing solemnity meant to protect him from a deeper and more murderous loneliness.” Well before the open-ended denouement, the material effectively fades toward the metaphysical and away from simple bad guys-vs.-good Mad Maxes, although its laments regarding the victimization of women, children, and nature are clear.
A tale of a languishing post-collapse world, expressed in fever-dream prose.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.
Set in the future and reminiscent of The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, this novel dramatizes a story of vengeance, warfare and the quest for power.
In the beginning, Darrow, the narrator, works in the mines on Mars, a life of drudgery and subservience. He’s a member of the Reds, an “inferior” class, though he’s happily married to Eo, an incipient rebel who wants to overthrow the existing social order, especially the Golds, who treat the lower-ranking orders cruelly. When Eo leads him to a mildly rebellious act, she’s caught and executed, and Darrow decides to exact vengeance on the perpetrators of this outrage. He’s recruited by a rebel cell and “becomes” a Gold by having painful surgery—he has golden wings grafted on his back—and taking an exam to launch himself into the academy that educates the ruling elite. Although he successfully infiltrates the Golds, he finds the social order is a cruel and confusing mash-up of deception and intrigue. Eventually, he leads one of the “houses” in war games that are all too real and becomes a guerrilla warrior leading a ragtag band of rebelliously minded men and women. Although it takes a while, the reader eventually gets used to the specialized vocabulary of this world, where warriors shoot “pulseFists” and are protected by “recoilArmor.” As with many similar worlds, the warrior culture depicted here has a primitive, even classical, feel to it, especially since the warriors sport names such as Augustus, Cassius, Apollo and Mercury.
A fine novel for those who like to immerse themselves in alternative worlds.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-53978-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.
A processing plant manager struggles with the grim realities of a society where cannibalism is the new normal.
Marcos Tejo is the boss’s son. Once, that meant taking over his father’s meat plant when the older man began to suffer from dementia and require nursing home care. But ever since the Transition, when animals became infected with a virus fatal to humans and had to be destroyed, society has been clamoring for a new source of meat, laboring under the belief, reinforced by media and government messaging, that plant proteins would result in malnutrition and ill effects. Now, as is true across the country, Marcos’ slaughterhouse deals in “special meat”—human beings. Though Marcos understands the moral horror of his job supervising the workers who stun, kill, flay, and butcher other humans, he doesn’t feel much since the crib death of his infant son. “One can get used to almost anything,” he muses, “except for the death of a child.” One day, the head of a breeding center sends Marcos a gift: an adult female FGP, a “First Generation Pure,” born and bred in captivity. As Marcos lives with his product, he gradually begins to awaken to the trauma of his past and the nightmare of his present. This is Bazterrica’s first novel to appear in America, though she is widely published in her native Argentina, and it could have been inelegant, using shock value to get across ideas about the inherent brutality of factory farming and the cruelty of governments and societies willing to sacrifice their citizenry for power and money. It is a testament to Bazterrica’s skill that such a bleak book can also be a page-turner.
An unrelentingly dark and disquieting look at the way societies conform to committing atrocities.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982150-92-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
© 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.
