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
Gripping and heartfelt, this prismatic novel is more than worth its salt.
A Jesuit and a nuclear inspector are polar-opposite pillars of (dis)belief in a biblical apocalypse hastened and hindered by social media.
The Vatican sends Father Avelyn Brocken back home to Hreodwater, a remote salt-mining town in England, to investigate the supposed miracle of another priest turning into a pillar of salt. Twelve years ago, young Avelyn left Hreodwater for the church, hiding his distinctive violet eyes behind contact lenses and lasering off his intricate tattoos, inked in tribute to the Hreoda’s slumbering cult idol, the Salt King. At the Dead Sea, Dr. Tallis Osho, a nuclear safety inspector accustomed to epileptic hallucinations, investigates phenomena similar to what’s happening in Hreodwater, particularly the eerie “salt light” shorting out electronics and eventually infecting humans with something akin to radiation poisoning. These two compelling, complicated figures anchor an end-of-days plot that is both global and intensely personal, as salt light spreads across the planet while Avelyn is drawn back into the dark thrall of the Salt King and his imminent waking. Having jumped among an alt-history 19th century, far future Mars, and the Bronze Age in her previous books, Pulley now transports us to a wholly recognizable 2030, where everyone has a persistent Covid cough and monks and doctors need likes and subscriptions so they can join in the cultural conversation. Drawing on some of her favorite narrative elements—time jumps, perspective shifts, mammoths—Pulley cleverly reckons with thorny questions of truth versus belief, faith versus institutions, and whether it’s better to navigate the unimaginable alone or with a companion whose very presence you doubt. Seeing is believing—or perhaps believing is seeing. Though the novel deals in prophecy and cataclysm, it champions free will down to its very last moments.
Gripping and heartfelt, this prismatic novel is more than worth its salt.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2026
ISBN: 9781639737291
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 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.
