A lively and engaging, if uneven, post-apocalyptic romp.
A young woman tries to survive in a post-pandemic world of zombies and mutants in this first installment of a horror series.
After a mysterious pandemic kills most of humankind, Jenna and other survivors band together to fight off attacks from Streakers—the flesh-eaters who have come back from the dead. Safety in numbers is the order of the day, and Jenna’s goal is to lead her group to High Point, an isolated inn, where the gang hopes to stay alive and create a community. In her diverse band are humans whose reaction to the virus was something completely different and unexpected. They became faster and stronger than regular humans but ended up severely sensitive to the sun. They also started feeding on blood—animal and human. While some call them vampires, they favor the term New Race. And Jenna has a push-and-pull relationship with one of them—the impossibly attractive and incredibly infuriating Caleb—as well as a budding friendship with hotheaded human Quentin. But as the group settles into its new home, Jenna and her friends find that there are worse things than the Streakers out there, and some of them are inside the inn. Acerbo’s zombie novel fuses elements of horror, fantasy, and romance to tell a familiar tale of survival that includes a love triangle involving Jenna, Caleb, and Quentin. The author also offers the trope of humans fighting one another. The combatants soon realize that humans can be just as evil as the mindless zombies searching for prey. Unfortunately, the narrative skims over deeper topics, such as Jenna’s PTSD and her survivor’s guilt. Still, Jenna and Caleb are appealing characters in this fast-paced story. In addition, the evolving dynamics between the humans and the members of the New Race—who start to see themselves as the superior beings—and the witty banter spouted by Jenna and her fellow survivors are nice touches. A cliffhanger deftly sets up the sequel.
A lively and engaging, if uneven, post-apocalyptic romp.Pub Date: March 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-952805-39-4
Page Count: 310
Publisher: DLG Publishing Partners, LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A standout genre-bending adventure with a tender romantic streak.
Two women on opposite sides of a long and bitter conflict each hear a prophecy that she holds the key to victory…but not which one of them will actually triumph.
On a far-in-the-future Earth, most of the human race is dominated by the Talusar empire. The Talusar worship the Fever, a strange illness that kills all who contract it. Half of those people stay dead, but the other half return to live with some kind of psychic gift, most commonly the ability to see the past. A smaller civilization, the Cedre, believe the mortality rate is not worth the loss of life, and fight to keep themselves quarantined. The Talusar have pushed the Cedre to a few small areas of the planet and to a space station in Earth’s orbit. Elegy Ahn is the second daughter of the Sword of Cedre, the Cedre’s most powerful political figure; she’s used to being the “spare” to her elder sister’s "heir." When the “augurs,” revered (and politically neutral) Talusar people with the rare Fever gift of seeing into the future, summon both Elegy and Rava Vidar, a ruthless Talusar general, they tell the women that each has the potential to lead their nation to victory over the other. As to which will triumph? Separately, the augurs give both Elegy and Rava cryptic clues. Elegy is told of three mysterious figures she’ll need to find, including a man with whom she will fall in love. Elegy is skeptical, especially since she’s already happily married. But when Rava Vidar takes swift and violent action against Elegy and Cedre, Elegy is forced to embrace her pivotal role in her people’s survival. Roth’s worldbuilding is detailed without being overwhelming; she focuses more on dystopia in this book and promises to dive deeper into speculative SF adventure in the next installment of the duology. The romance element is seamlessly woven into the plot and comes off elegantly as a result of Roth’s excellent character development.
A standout genre-bending adventure with a tender romantic streak.Pub Date: May 12, 2026
ISBN: 9781250347909
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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