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
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.
On the isle of Capri, Helen Lingate seeks revenge on the people responsible for her mother’s death 30 years earlier—her own family.
When Sarah Lingate fell to her death on Capri in 1992, she left behind a 3-year-old daughter, Helen, and a legacy as a gifted playwright; her favorite necklace of golden snakes was lost to the sea. Thirty years later, Helen, chafing at the restrictions she’s grown up under as a member of the old-money Lingate family, hatches a plan with her uncle Marcus’ assistant, Lorna Moreno, to blackmail her uncle and her father with that same necklace, which mysteriously entered her possession a few months before. The novel begins on Capri just after Lorna disappears, and then traces her steps from 36 hours earlier. Interweaving chapters from the points of view of Helen, Lorna, and Sarah—as well as, later, a few others—we learn how Sarah gradually became stifled by the constant pressure of keeping up appearances until she became inspired to write a play, Saltwater, that was a not-so-thinly veiled tell-all revealing dark Lingate family secrets. It was shortly after this that she fell to her death. The loss of her mother has come to define Helen’s life, and if she can use the necklace as leverage to escape her family, and maybe learn the truth along the way, she’ll take the risk. Lorna’s motives are both murkier and more straightforward—she’s never had money, and she’s got a chip on her shoulder about it, so splitting 10 million euros with Helen sounds like a way to discard her past and start fresh. These strong, conniving women drive the drama and the narrative, and they are captivating enough that as twist after twist begins to unfurl, the novel still feels character-driven. The end—well, the end shocks. And it’s well earned. By the time the sun sets on the gorgeous excess and rugged coast of Capri, lives will have been destroyed.
A feisty storm of Greek tragedy headlined by three very modern women.Pub Date: March 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593875551
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.
Second of the Walter Nash thrillers—following Nash Falls (2025)—in which the remade hero seeks vengeance.
Due to urgent circumstances, Nash has bulked himself up to become the “muscled and tatted fighting machine” now known as Dillon Hope. His antagonist is Victoria Steers, a global drug dealer who wants him dead. Not realizing his new identity, she enlists Hope to free her mother, Masuyo, from a prison in Myanmar. As an incentive, she shoots one of her associates and threatens to frame Hope for the murder unless he complies. She also wants him to find Nash. He in turn wants to kill Victoria to avenge the death of his innocent daughter, Maggie. “If I go down,” he muses, “I’m taking others with me. Starting with Victoria Steers.” He learns that Victoria had killed all her siblings to eliminate business competition. But as heartless as Victoria is, her mother, Masuyo, is even worse. In league with the Chinese government in a perverse plan to kill as many Americans as possible through fentanyl overdose, she shows contempt for Victoria for her perceived weaknesses. Readers won’t find many happy family relationships here: mother-daughter, father-son, husband-wife—all fraught. Hope’s employer, who accompanies him to Myanmar, is a billionaire chief executive with a dodgy past (i.e., probably killed his father). And there’s a mega-billionaire with an astronomical IQ and ditch-deep morals who, putting it mildly, does not have America’s best interests at heart. As a teenager, he’d defeated two world chess champions; as an adult, he regards his dealings with the world in terms of master chess moves. Only one character seems truly decent and credible—Hiroko, Victoria’s former nanny and lifelong companion, who provides Hope with valuable insights into the Steers’ background, which is partly Chinese. Searing grudges, simple evil, and not-so-simple misunderstandings carry the cast through this complex, action-packed plot. This sequel ties out the loose ends dangling in Nash Falls, which would be helpful to read first. To get to the requisite ending, though, Baldacci takes pains to surprise the reader. It works but often feels forced.
Filled with action, violence, and more twists than a bag of pretzels.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9781538758021
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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