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Book Review: Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

 

Cover art for Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Tor Trade, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250794642

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook ( Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com )

 

Unless you are hardcore into extreme horror, you need an iron stomach for this one.

 

Manhunt is a response to gender apocalypse stories, such as Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man, which do not address the existence of trans and gender-nonconforming individuals. Unlike those, Manhunt puts trans people front and center.

 

A plague, T. rex, has infected all individuals with a high level of testosterone (mostly men), causing physical and mental disintegration and reducing them to a set of impulses to rape, maim, and kill any living thing nearby. Trans women become manhunters because testicles and kidneys are a source of estrogen, which they need both to be feminized and to overcome the testosterone that would make them vulnerable to T. rex. The flip side of this is that TERFs have taken over and will shoot and kill any trans women. Fran and Beth are manhunters who have an unfortunate encounter with TERFs and are later attacked by a pack of men who rape Beth. They are rescued by a trans man, Robbie, and take their bounty, and Robbie, to Indi, who has medical training and can use the testicles to synthesize estrogen. Indi has been invited to be the doctor for a compound for trans women and brings Fran, Beth, and Robbie with her. While initially this seems a safer path, something is seriously wrong there. There’s a rebellion, the compound burns, and the survivors create a new community and start planning an attack on the TERFs.

 

Ramona is a TERF close to the leader, Teach. She is secretly involved with a trans woman, and when the relationship is discovered her lover is executed and she is put in charge of cleaning out all trans women from the city. Fran gets involved with her and Ramona betrays Teach. However, she is not caught because another woman confesses to helping the trans women. The scene of her execution is incredibly painful and gory. Felker-Martin’s answer to the question of what would happen if men really were out of the picture is that there are women who will step in to do the same kinds of terrible things.

 

This is rage-filled and clearly very personal to the author, who is a trans woman. It doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable or disturbing emotions or situations, I can’t begin to say how difficult this was for me to read and finish, but I also couldn’t look away. It’s a powerful book, with a lot about the value of community, and made me think about the difficulties trans people face that I have the privilege not to reckon with as a cis woman. I think it’s is likely to be a classic in the genre.

 

Contains: transphobia, transphobic slurs, cannibalism, rape, body horror

 

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

Posted on March 27, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Welcome to the Splatter Club, Vol. 1, edited by K. Trap Jones

Welcome to the Splatter Club, Vol. 1, by various authors, edited by K. Trap Jones

Blood Bound Publishing, 2020

ISBN: 9781940250434

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition  ( Amazon.com )

 

The main thing Welcome to the Splatter Club has in common with its sequel (Welcome to the Splatter Club, Vol. 2, previously reviewed here) is the high level of originality.  The thirteen stories are quite loopy, and are all over the place for plotlines.  However, it is an uneven collection: as good as the ideas are, a number of the stories don’t have enough bang and pop to keep the reader interested and the pages flipping at a quick speed.  The first half of the book is clearly the better half. The best stories include:

 

“23 to 46”: the most original, the most entertaining, and also the funniest.  The sperm housed in Matt’s balls suddenly start talking to him, and make his life impossible for the rest of the story.  They are mad he isn’t reproducing, and Matt has no interest in kids.  This is a hilarious romp that gives new meaning to the term ‘body politics.’

 

“The Woman in the Ditch”: A rural area legend, the blond woman only appears swimming in the ditch alongside country roads when there is enough rain, and of course it only happens in certain years.  What does she want?  Go to her and find out…but it may not be what you desire.  This could almost be a dark version of a Disney fairy tale.  

 

“Code Black”: Tired of juveniles committing heinous crimes and getting away with them due to an overly liberal justice system?  So are the people of Trapper Valley, especially when a kid unleashes a monster from the Abyss.  However, this town has Code Black…which will do what the justice system won’t.  

 

“Dickey Dykstra”: Ever wanted to beat the tar out of your boss, just because he’s a total jackass?  So does a certain employee, but his boss, the aforementioned Dickey, has problems WAY bigger than being a dick at work.  Let’s just say they involve hobbyhorses, and prepare yourself for the unexpected.  When Dickey’s secret comes to light, he makes Leatherface seem like a normal, well-adjusted human being.

 

“The Big Bad Boy”: We all know that Twinkies, Snowballs, and Ho-Hos are never going to be found in the FDA’s food pyramid for a balanced diet, but what happens when they really will kill you?  One poor convenience store clerk is going to find out.

 

There are a few other good ones, but there’s also a chunk of stories that just don’t quite do it.  When it’s good, it’s quite good, but the lackluster ones are frustrating.  If you’re on the fence about buying this, just go for Vol. 2 in the series instead, which is a “can’t miss” collection of stories.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

 

 

 

Posted on March 21, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: The Order of Eternal Sleep by S.C. Mendes

Cover art for The Order of Eternal Sleep by S.C. Mendes

The Order of Eternal Sleep by S.C. Mendes

Blood Bound Books, 2022

ISBN: 9781940250489

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition ( Amazon.com )

 

This is the sequel to S. C. Mendes’s 2017 novel, The City. You must read The City first.The Order of Eternal Sleep will make no sense otherwise.

 

The Order of Eternal Sleep does a good job keeping the story going, but it’s a very different book from the first.  Almost all of the book takes place aboveground in San Francisco: the City that made the first book so spectacular barely shows up.  The story is a LOT more involved, with multiple plot threads, to the point that it gets confusing on occasion.  The characters have switched: the secondary characters from the first book have become the prime characters, and vice versa.  The changes don’t make it a bad book by any stretch. It’s still quite good, just different.  Overall, this book feels like a bit of a “bridge” book to the next one, which is likely to be a smashmouth finish to the series.

 

Detective McCloud takes over as the main character, while the star of the first, Max Elliot, has a much smaller role.  Ming also takes over as one of the primaries, and there are a host of secondary characters scattered throughout the book.  The main point of the story is to set up some of the details on the Mara (those lizard-men) plot to take over the world, and it has a lot to it.  There are Temples of Bone, nurseries of some sort, a black sun, and the Order.  McCloud spends most of the book trying to piece the puzzle together, finding obstacles everywhere, as the Mara have no shortage of sleazebags in San Francisco willing to do their bidding. 

 

McCloud’s character undergoes a nice evolution from the first book. He becomes a much tougher character then he was in the first book, willing to use any methods to get answers.  Ming has undergone a seismic shift as well, from a streetwise whelp to a hired assassin.  It’s a good change, as there is no way nice guys are going to beat the Mara: you have to be nasty to slug it out with them.  

 

Another change is that there is a group of people aboveground opposed to the Mara, called the Engineers of Light, although unfortunately, details on them are not forthcoming in the book.  Hopefully, more about them will be in the next book.  A good amount of the book feels like it is setting everything up for the next book, likely to be the climax to the series.  This book still holds its own, it just doesn’t offer any resolution and leaves more questions then answers.  It’s similar to how in the Harry Potter series The Order of the Phoenix was the transition book from the first four books to a blowout war in the last two.

 

Bottom line: if you liked the first one, you’ll like this as well, but it’s likely to leave you hoping the next one comes out soon.  If you’ve come this far in the series, you’ll be desperate to see how it ends.  Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Murray Samuelson

Posted on January 20, 2023 by , Reply
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