Reviews with content warning for Kidnapping - Manhunt

Ok so I lost everything that I wrote in this since it didn't save so I'm just gonna blast through it stream on consciousness style

I'm not sure how to feel about this book

Things I like:
1) gore was good. Horror zombie virus that only affects men, good. The gorely disgust details of how the men act and feed very interesting to have
2) I like the world building of how this new society acts and is rebuilding into factions and kingdoms and different roles that works well
3) I like the individual characters. I might now understand them completely, but they have their own wants and desires and are fully people that made me like or dislike them as people

But those are good points, cause then it gets complicated

Things I don't like:
1) I don't understand how the main cast relates to each other. We don't see them interact as a group. Like seeing Fran and Beth together in the beginning, that was good. But then when Robbie appeared it just went so fast with introducing new characters that we don't have time to breath. We don't see the 4 friends (Beth, Fran, Robbie, Indi) actually talk with one another as a group. We don't see them learn about the other people. Like Robbie is brand new to this group you would think there were questions. But that doesn't matter because we move instantly to the second arc and see their individual dilemm s and problems. But they never talk about it together at all. Most i see is 2 characters and thats it. Not a lot of strong ties as a group

like it really does seem that Robbie only joined just for the sex. And Beth and indi only confess their love in the final act even tho I had not read ANY HINTS surrounding that

2) all the intimate relationships are sexual. I get that sexuality and sex can be a big part of identity, and you can see what the characters thing of their gender and sexuality through sex. Thats a good conversation. But like, every relationship is sexual, has sex, and only shows intamicy through sex. Like no other quiet moments or feelings, just sex. I get this isnt a romance book, but it ties back to the first point of How do they relate to one another, why are they together, do they only see each other for sex?

Also, the author is putting her kinks in there there is a lot of spitting and drooling in these sex scenes

3) there is a lot of pointed commentary in this book and also a lot of references with no purpose. For the references they will say things like "I put away books like new moon with the angst teenage romance." Which doesnt serve anything. They said a thing, and I know the thing, but where does it go with it? For the pointed commentary the narration or flow will stop just to give like a sum up of a person or thing they see or remember. Like there will be a paragraph about the type of white woman that you would see in a small town church. They are good descriptions, but there's a lot of them. And with these little scenes being at most 2 pages it it very noticeable. that have them going o. Their own individual assignments and paths

Case in point the bad guy fascist group is called TERFs. Which yeah they would be but like, not gonna be subtle about it. As villains they are decent since they are like fascist soldiers so they are terrible people but are using this to basically be transphobic and stay in power. Also they showed Teachs poverty at the end of the book when things are going to shit instead of the beginning or middle of the book where it can be used to explain her motivation for past and future actions.

Their hypocrisy is intriguing tho. They are trying to convince boys to take hormones and begin treatment to transition into women so they can be saved from the virus. Even have a person Kilroy be their mascot example for it, the perfect female body vs being a caged zombie monster. But they only like Trans women when it is in their image of being a woman and who they deemed valid and safe. So I really like that.

5) there are also some ideas and plot points that seem to just disappear like I don't know where or how they came up it just is

like where did the baby girl go to? You would think if a zombie carrier gave birth to a girl then it would be a main focus but she just got wicked away even tho that's a miracle baby right there.
No idea how Teach knew Beth's dead name. Like how? Why? Also, why the FUCK was Kilroy a sleeper agent this entire time? Damn I want to know his story, how to live he was forced to transition but basically sabatoged the shit out of the terf ship. Again no hint or lead up to it, it just happens

So yeah, it was ok to read. I was intrigued but not interested

Content Warnings

babybasil's review against another edition

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tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.0

To say the book as a whole was bad would be incorrect. The premise was cool. It could have been so amazing if the writing wasn’t so flat. I nearly DNFd this book, but I hate quiting, so I slogged on to my detriment.

Firstly, if the book goes more than 3 pages without mentioning sex or someone’s genitals, it was a lucky 3 pages. Like, it’s constant. Everyone is fucking each other all the time. Everyone is thinking of sex all the time. And if they’re not thinking of sex, they’re thinking about how they or the men they’re hunting have genitals. Seriously, it was alright for the first few chapters, but by the middle of the book, I was pretty fed up. We’re introduced to half the cast via sex and, sometimes, it was just flat out weird. I believe it was Fran who just straight out asked the doctor if they could fuck and I nearly threw the book across the room.

Another issue was the story. There was no real storyline. It was just the plot of “men are monsters now and TERFs want to kill trans people” and that was it. It never felt like there was an actual story happening, just a bunch of people fucking and killing. Even the “romance” in the book felt crazy forced. Robbie saying he loved Fran in 3 days? Crazy unbelievable since we never got the two even sharing a moment besides fucking next to an unconscious Beth the same day they met. There was a point at the book where one of the main characters was working as a prostitute essentially. She seemed to have the attention of the head hancho of a bunker, but then a chapter later, her boyfriend was told she was apparently doing a bad job??? Since when?? The characterization was never pointed out and it was just such lazy writing to move the plot on. The whole book is littered with lazy writing.

Next, I hate terfs as much as any self respecting person does, but the way the book sought to victimize the characters constantly was a bit boring. It felt like making a terf army was the easy way out, ESPECIALLY when they later just straight up accepted trans people/men if they did grunt work and got bottom surgery. It took away all the danger of their army and was just dull.

Then there was the perspective jumping. I love books that have multiple character perspectives, especially when we get to see how their stories over lap. But when your perspective shifts 3-6 times (usually just 2-3 paragraphs per section) a CHAPTER? It gets so fucking confusing, especially when some of the sections just start “she”. One was so bad I never really figured out who it was supposed to be. Like, who am I meant to root for? What is even going on? We went from a tense moment to yet another character fucking. It was awful! Just pick a character per chapter and stick with them. Or if you do switch, at least make it make sense.

Another thing was the nazi imagery. I get that Gretchen was trying to make an end of the world “the terfs are killing all trans women” narrative, but using the holocaust and nazi imagery made me, a Jewish women, incrediably uncomfortable. I hate when people compare things to nazis and the literal extermination of my ancestors. It’s not a necessary allegory and she pushed it SO HARD I was rolling my eyes. At nazis. Like, enough is enough.

Not even that but Indi’s fatphobia is so unnecessary. Like, as a fat person, I don’t think about it as horribly or awfully as she does. She’s constantly going on about her rolls or how other characters are touching her “deeply buried collarbones”. It’s so bad. It nearly tipped into racism half the time with how the book treated Indi.

Overall, I did not like this book at all. It was such a waste of a story idea because the virus was such a cool idea. I really don’t recommend it.

Content Warnings

lakecryptid's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

This book really gripped me the whole time I was reading it-- I think I read it nonstop over a period of like 2 days, often late into the night. It pulled me into the story even when I had just planned to read a page or two while "multitasking" at cooking or working on personal projects. I was initially intrigued by the premise before the book came out, because I've read or seen so many different "gender apocalypse" stories which conveniently leave out trans people. As a trans woman myself, I obviously want to see a familiar perspective that is often neglected in fiction (I definitely need to broaden my horizons, but I think this is the first novel I've read with trans women protagonists), but I also think it's just good world-building, showing that the author has done some research and is willing to dig into the complicated nitty-gritty of what the effects of their chromosome apocalypse (or hormone plague or whatever) would actually be like, beyond a tired "battle of the sexes" type of story. I think that this book succeeds at telling a deeply human story of survival in the face of apocalypse, in such a way that the supernatural man-beasts take a back seat to the bone chilling political and genocidal violence that threatens to drown the main characters. That could be a plus or minus depending on how much sci-fi chaos people want in their post apocalypse, but I personally think this is the smart way to tell a post apocalypse story, in which the zombies or monsters become just another faction, or weapon, for the characters to navigate.
The level of violence in this book is a lot, and the constant peril that the trans characters are in, in addition to the persistent self hatred and interpersonal vitriol, is often overwhelming. It was heartbreaking to read about Beth and Fran's fraught relationship, and seeing the former woman express such beautiful compassion and love, and be met with such deep rejection and loneliness, even from her close friend, was crushing, if accurate. It's sad that the level of trans misogyny and transphobia feels so believable and true to the current moment. Fran's character is understandably grating a lot of the time, and at times it feels like she and Beth almost veer into stereotypes, but not quite. The complex internal narratives and contradictions of the characters save them from being one-note, or simple didactic archetypes to illustrate a political point. I appreciated that in the context of Fran,

her betrayal of her friends was not excused, or easily forgiven, but neither was she made into a completely hate-able cast off (in my mind, that would have played into ideas of trans disposability that the story really tries to oppose). Her selfishness is abominable, and deeply human.

. Speaking as a trans woman, I feel like Fran and Beth can represent different aspects that live inside all of us. Learning to look at the ugly parts of our personal image, and learning how to turn away from selfishness and towards solidarity, is an extremely difficult thing to do, but an act of reflection that I think this story really tries to draw out.
By far the most difficult sections of the book to read were the passages from the POV of

Ramona, the TERF soldier. Those parts of the book, unfortunately sometimes felt the most didactic, and the closest to what would have been a worse book as a whole-- a graphic morality tale in which the transphobe POV finds her humanity through the fridging of her favorite sex object. I don't think this was the intention at all, but unfortunately, Feather is one of the few regular characters in the book whose interior narrative we never see. Even a single passage showing their perspective during one of Ramona's scenes would have made a huge difference.

.
I recently finished the book, and upon reflecting more on the story, something I noticed was how all violence, including sexual violence, is presented in the book. The characters are always making pragmatic and strategic decisions about how much violence they can endure, at what cost, and when they can afford to fight back. This kind of grim pragmatism in perspective feels jarring and gross to read, and it should. It's the honest reflection of a bunch of people living through nonstop trauma, in which there often is no "safe" choice, and the only ways the characters can exercise control is by trying as hard as they can to pick how and when they can resist, and when they have to dissociate to live and fight another day. I've read criticisms that the violence and sex in the book is often described in a uniformly graphic style, regardless of the context. I can see that as a valid criticism, since it could be seen as not making a distinction, for example, between consensual sex and sexual violence, or violence and sex at all. In my view, that distinction is still there, but the stylistic unity across scenes shows that in the minds of the characters, the horrible violence they have endured never really leaves their minds, or bodies. It haunts them as they run, as they fight, as they hold their loved ones and are re-traumatized by their enemies. It's gruesome and crushing to read, but in my mind, those are some of the most realistic and affecting parts of the story that really make an impact about the type of world the characters are living in, and what types of perspectives they have been forced to abandon through trauma.

Content Warnings

criticalgayze's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

My thanks to the publisher, Tor Nightfire, for an advanced digital copy of this title via Netgalley in exchange for free and fair review consideration.

Holy heck. As you can see from the litany of "trigger warnings" appended to this review (on Storygraph, if viewing on another platform), this book is a minefield of topics. Felker-Martin is most definitely not aiming for inclusion in your local right-wing library.

If you read last year's bestselling and highly lauded Detransition Baby, then you have already been in conversation with many of the ideas presented here. In fact, Felker-Martin both quotes and credits the author, Torrey Peters, within the work. Like Detransition, Baby, Manhunt is actively wrestling with both how trans people, specifically trans women, are socialized amongst each other and among the broader (specifically female-identifying) population.

By mutating all peoples producing high, masculine-assigning levels of testosterone, Felker-Martin is able to grapple almost exclusively with how trans women, and their allies to a lesser extent, are treated by the femme-assigned-and-identifying by allowing the latter group to have reason to make their discomfort and disdain explicit. As these trans women could be biologically betrayed into regressing to masc-presentation levels of testosterone, which would force them to succumb to the novel's male-mutating pandemic. With this excuse, femme-assigned-and-identifying women seeking gender purity and previously denied power structures are able to finally dissociate from tacit allyship in favor of a sex-based caste system.

This book is shamelessly targeted. Felker-Martin repeatedly calls out known TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) J.K. Rowling, who has on multiple occasions sought to delineate trans women from biological women, like herself. Because of this pointed critique, this book will face its share of intense backlash and vitriol from those who claim themselves allies (or those who purposefully do not) yet want to exclusively own their biological title as "woman" in an attempt to win the "oppression olympics."

Consider this my Surgeon General's book stamp: Approach with caution, but approach.

Quotes:
Pussy certified all-natural by the Daughters of the Witches You Couldn’t Burn or whatever Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival bullshit the TERFocracy in Maryland bowed down to. (Location 82)
She always scarred like that, as though her body had known ahead of time that it was going to be torn open. As though it were prepared for mutilation. (Location 603)
“Oh, honey.” Indi settled deeper into the chair, shifting back and forth inside its confines. “The world is over. Who cares how fast you go?” (Location 1061)
She’d been like that for as long as Fran had known her, as meticulous about her clothes, her hair, her makeup as she was careless about her house, as though she were a topiary: not quite static, but reliant on the illusion of it. (Location 1321)
She had a whole drawer full of different smiles for when she needed them. (Location 1386)
Fran could see the blank “Sex” boxes on the intake form, twin islands all-encompassing in a sea of ephemera. How many times had she dithered in the blank quarter inch between them? (Location 1560)
“I’m trans. I’ve had first dates with more crying than that.” (Location 1998)
It’s just a way to keep from being drawn and quartered by the Knights of J. K. Rowling. (Location 2217)
“Them, the people outside, the people in Boston and Concord and Worcester. Every dyke and freak and faggot in the world is my fucking problem, and they’re yours too, Fran." (Location 2599)
Community is when you never let go of each other. Not even after you’re gone. (Location 3965)

Content Warnings

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