A gripping but uneven dystopian tale with fantastical elements.
In a village ruled by masked elders, a young woman must uncover forbidden knowledge in a hidden library before a sacred ritual seals her fate.
In this novel set in an unnamed, isolated village, nine mysterious elders enforce strict traditions to preserve social order. Life is governed by nature rather than clocks, knowledge is tightly controlled, and women’s roles are predetermined. Sylvie is a free-spirited young woman raised by her grandfather, who secretly taught her to read and question their controlled existences. On his deathbed, he reveals that there’s more to the story she’s been told about her mother’s death and her outsider father’s absence. Sylvie possesses fragments of truth, an inherited ring with an endless knot design, and questions about her origins. Sadly, her search for answers is about to end prematurely. Sylvie has managed to avoid “the ritual”—a compulsory ceremony for all women of a certain age carried out by an elder—longer than most, but the pressure keeps mounting. She’s given the choice to have her bodily autonomy stripped in front of the entire village or inside her home by an unwanted new husband. Determined to uncover the truth, Sylvie explores the forbidden library, a repository of hidden knowledge (“It was the only building still standing from a bygone era and the only place where I might find answers”). What she uncovers inside propels her on a journey through time and space, sometimes guided by a raven, leading her to a legendary tree. Finding this tree is part of her destiny and a larger cycle that must be completed. Broadwell’s captivating novel excels in building atmosphere and tension, using the insular, timeless village as both a physical and psychological cage. The author vividly renders Sylvie’s internal struggle—her desire for knowledge, autonomy, and truth—and makes her both relatable and inspiring as a protagonist. Broadwell also skillfully weaves together eco-fiction, feminist dystopia, and mythic fantasy, exploring how environmental devastation, patriarchal control, and the suppression of knowledge are deeply interconnected. But the pacing falters at times, with extended exposition and detailed descriptions slowing the momentum. And, while Sylvie is a compelling hero, secondary characters receive less attention, which can make parts of the village and its inhabitants feel underexplored.
A gripping but uneven dystopian tale with fantastical elements.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2023
ISBN: 9798378492626
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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