THE DEATH OF EVE

World War III, aka the “Medical Cold War,” has left earth in a post-apocalyptic state where the female sex is dying out, creating a hellish environment for the last remaining women.

Carol arrives at her new dome in a state of exhausted confusion. At 22, she has survived rape and witnessed a brutal murder that left her with chronic migraines and anxiety; yet somehow Carol senses that things are only going to get worse. She’s right. Now, she’s sent to live with the 300 remaining women in the country to be experimented on like a lab rat in an attempt to find a cure for humankind’s inability to breed females. In Carol’s first night in the dome, Mionne, her first roommate and the ultimate psychopathic villain, trades Carol to be gang-raped in exchange for cigarettes. Luckily—was it luck?—Carol was saved by a woman she met earlier that day before the workers (who illegally skipped their daily dosage of sex- and violence-repressing chemicals) could have their way. Carol and her heroine, Jessie, a former nurse and classic beauty, evolve from caring roommates into intimate lovers. Together, they attempt to find a way to escape from the hell of the dome to whatever awaits them outside. Meanwhile, Gen. Kuromori takes a peculiar, obsessive interest in Carol that turns into a ferocious search, and Mionne finds a secret weapon that allows her to sexually control the men of the dome, turning them into sex-crazed maniacs. After an odd change of luck puts Carol and Jessie on the outside, they brave a sandstorm and find an unexpected accomplice in an ex-“sashurai” (a trained fighter) who saves them, yet again, from rape, this time by the leader of a tribal village. In addition to learning that life exists outside of the domes, Carol and Jessie discover a shocking fact that leads to a complicated conclusion to tie up the story’s loose ends. The “what if” plotline compellingly knots together world war and science-gone-wrong, with a titillating mix of sex and gender issues. Although longer than it needs to be, the fast-paced story is intriguingly unpredictable.

An outlandish, sexually charged tale that might be too much for prim readers.