A character-driven trek through a quieter apocalypse, rich in moral questions if light on spectacle.
A resourceful, globe-trotting physician aids a stranded father and daughter on a 1,000-mile trek to reunite their family in Naughton’ post-apocalyptic novel.
At Pittsburgh International Airport, Anna Hastings, a doctor, is speaking with her sister when her phone suddenly goes dead. Everyone else’s does, too, and the lights and electric buzz of the terminal fall silent, leaving a stunned silence just before the planes begin falling out of the sky. She struggles to keep pace with the emergency unfolding around her, helping free engineer Mark Ryan from beneath fallen debris while his young daughter, Lily, looks on in terror. As the crisis settles, Mark explains his theory that an electromagnetic pulse has permanently disabled devices with microchips. As Anna tries to decide what to do in a strange city far from home, her new friend reveals an unlikely plan: to rendezvous with his wife, Lauren, in Maine by way of a 1,000-mile hiking trail, with 7-year-old Lily in tow. For reasons not even Anna fully understands, she volunteers to come along, braving harsh weather, treating injuries once easily managed but now potentially fatal, and confronting the desperation and violence of people in a world stripped of order. Using first-person narration, Naughton grounds the story in a strong and capable but increasingly conflicted protagonist. Anna and her companions encounter only occasional threats from others—a ragtag band of “gangers,” a sadistic sniper, and desperate looters. Instead, the narrative focuses on the routines of the trail, where the group contends with bad weather, fatigue, and arguments. The novel’s tension centers largely on the ethical dilemmas Anna faces in this new status quo, from reconciling her Hippocratic oath with having to protect herself to confronting her growing attachment to a married man. Readers expecting nonstop action may find the pace subdued, but the quieter approach allows the novel to explore moral questions and the intimate human consequences of a world suddenly made smaller.
A character-driven trek through a quieter apocalypse, rich in moral questions if light on spectacle.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2023
ISBN: 9798986852560
Page Count: 540
Publisher: Wordsmyth Creations LLC
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.
The first installment of Liu’s Julia Z saga is an SF thriller set in a near-future “post-truth age” where the use of AI and the inundation of digital disinformation and data pollution have blurred the lines between delusion and reality.
Julia—whose immigrant mother, a divisive political activist, was murdered during a border protest—has lived on her own since she was 14. A brilliant hacker now 23, she’s been trying to live in online anonymity, acutely aware of the multitude of ways she can be identified and tracked. Living in a Boston suburb and struggling to make ends meet, she inadvertently becomes entangled with a lawyer named Piers Neri and his search for his artist wife, Elli Krantz—famous for her experimental work in vivid dreaming—who may or may not have been kidnapped. A prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance, Piers goes on the run with the help of Julia—and together, they begin putting together pieces of a mind-bogglingly intricate puzzle that links Elli to a powerful criminal with a global reach. As Julia digs deeper into the appeal of vivid dreaming and the criminal’s ruthless endeavors, she discovers the sham that is the American Dream: “America was corrupt and steeped in sin. The powerful had rigged the game for themselves and turned the country into a panopticon to imprison the rest of us. Anytime one of the powerless—it didn’t matter the color of your skin, the language you spoke, the place you were born in—was on the verge of climbing out, they would be ruthlessly tossed back into the pit.” And amid the backdrop of dealing with unresolved childhood trauma and the need to find her place in the world, she finds something unexpected—herself.
Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781668083178
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
IMAX-scale bleeding-edge techno-horror from a writer with a freshly sharpened scalpel and time on his hands.
The world as we know it ended in Wanderers, Wendig’s 2019 bestseller. Now what?
A sequel to a pandemic novel written during an actual pandemic sounds pretty intense, and this one doesn’t disappoint, heightened by its author’s deft narrative skills, killer cliffhangers, and a not inconsiderable amount of bloodletting. To recap: A plague called White Mask decimated humanity, with a relative handful saved by a powerful AI called Black Swan that herded this hypnotized flock to Ouray, Colorado. Among the survivors are Benji Ray, a scientist formerly with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Shana Stewart, who is pregnant and the reluctant custodian of the evolving AI (via nanobots, natch); Sheriff Marcy Reyes; and pastor Matthew Bird. In Middle America, President Ed Creel, a murdering, bigoted, bullying Trump clone, raises his own army of scumbags to fight what remains of the culture wars. When Black Swan kidnaps Shana’s child, she and Benji set off on another cross-country quest to find a way to save him. On their way to CDC headquarters, they pick up hilariously foulmouthed rock god Pete Corley, back from delivering Willie Nelson’s guitar to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. This novel is an overflowing font of treasures peppered with more than a few pointed barbs for any Christofacists or Nazis who might have wandered in by accident. Where Wanderers was about flight in the face of menace, this is an old-fashioned quest with a small band of noble heroes trying to save the world while a would-be tyrant gathers his forces. All those big beats, not least a cataclysmic showdown in Atlanta, are tempered by the book’s more intimate struggles, from Shana’s primal instinct to recover her boy to the grief Pete buries beneath levity to Matthew Bird’s near-constant grapple with guilt. It’s a lot to take in, but Pete’s ribald, bombastic humor as well as funny interstitials and epigraphs temper the horror within.
IMAX-scale bleeding-edge techno-horror from a writer with a freshly sharpened scalpel and time on his hands.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-15877-7
Page Count: 816
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2022
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