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bestofsons's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Deadnaming, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Incest, Misogyny, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Transphobia, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Lesbophobia, Outing, Sexual harassment, and War
babybasil's review against another edition
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
Graphic: Ableism, Animal death, Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Deadnaming, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Incest, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Antisemitism, Medical content, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Cannibalism, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Murder, Pregnancy, Lesbophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
Moderate: Incest
bites_of_books's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
An apocalypse book where a virus is triggered in people who have higher levels of testosterone, causing them to become feral beasts.
This is a book where the author has zero sympathy for the reader, they describe everything in raw and gory detail and hold back nothing. The atmosphere is rich in the toxic nature of the characters and also the general anxiety that it is to live in a world where various groups of people are trying to survive. We follow Fran and Beth, two trans women who are trying to survive in a world where they hunt men who have turned feral in order to harvest their organs for selling and also to acquire the hormones they need to avoid turning into these feral beasts. To top that, they also need to be wary of a group of TERFs who are building an army, trying to be the new law of the land.
I highly encourage you to read and listen to trans reviewers since a lot of the book is from that perspective. Trans experiences are not represented in literature enough and even less in horror so this book is highly valuable because it does put those experiences front and center.
The overall plot of the book jumped around a bit too much for my liking, it seemed like the first half of the book was about one thing while the second half focused on something completely different. While our main characters arcs do take precedence, there were a couple of other characters that came in and out of the story never fully solidifying their connection to the main characters.
I'd highly recommend checking all the content warnings, if you do want to venture into this book. I'd say that if you like apocalypse stories with a completely different perspective, full of gore that doesn't hold back, this might be the book for you.
This is a book where the author has zero sympathy for the reader, they describe everything in raw and gory detail and hold back nothing. The atmosphere is rich in the toxic nature of the characters and also the general anxiety that it is to live in a world where various groups of people are trying to survive. We follow Fran and Beth, two trans women who are trying to survive in a world where they hunt men who have turned feral in order to harvest their organs for selling and also to acquire the hormones they need to avoid turning into these feral beasts. To top that, they also need to be wary of a group of TERFs who are building an army, trying to be the new law of the land.
I highly encourage you to read and listen to trans reviewers since a lot of the book is from that perspective. Trans experiences are not represented in literature enough and even less in horror so this book is highly valuable because it does put those experiences front and center.
The overall plot of the book jumped around a bit too much for my liking, it seemed like the first half of the book was about one thing while the second half focused on something completely different. While our main characters arcs do take precedence, there were a couple of other characters that came in and out of the story never fully solidifying their connection to the main characters.
I'd highly recommend checking all the content warnings, if you do want to venture into this book. I'd say that if you like apocalypse stories with a completely different perspective, full of gore that doesn't hold back, this might be the book for you.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Deadnaming, Death, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Hate crime, Homophobia, Infertility, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Torture, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Blood, Antisemitism, Medical content, Grief, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Lesbophobia, Outing, Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment, Dysphoria, War, and Injury/Injury detail
amybouwer's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Cursing, Deadnaming, Death, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Gore, Hate crime, Homophobia, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Blood, Antisemitism, Lesbophobia, Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment, War, and Classism
thepurplebookwyrm's review against another edition
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
0.5
Full video rant review here: https://youtu.be/F5YI7bXmhdg.
Disclaimer: I read this primarily because Normal People was making my grief and depression worse, and I needed some trash to distract my broken heart. So yes, I went in fully expecting this to be bad - though not quite as bad as it turned out to be -, and as an autistic, gender-critical feminist (so technically one of the book's "baddies" lmao) who has this whole debate as one of her very niche special interests. Y'all ready?
I've read my fair share of sex-based plague/power-shift stories over the past couple of years (The Power, The Screwfly Solution, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, Y: The Last Man and The End of Men). I've been disappointed about as equally as I've been satisfied by them: what often fails for me is the superficiality of the theming and the flimsiness of the world-building, The Power and The End of Men were especially guilty of that... But holy shit does Manhunt take the cake here.
Manhunt, a text that tries to be a queered up and porned up amalgamation of Y: The Last Man, The Screwfly Solution and The Walking Dead, presents the reader with a world where a pathogen, the t-rex (really? 🙄) virus transforms anyone with high-enough testosterone levels into an über-aggressive, dehumanised hybrid between a zombie and a werewolf that wants to rape, eat and kill (not necessarily in that order) anything that has a hole between their legs. In practice however, that just means men and... pre-op trans women, but not really because mile-wide holes in the world-building. The remaining women and trans people have to survive in a very ugly world where groups of so-called TERFs (never defined for normies of course) have established a matriarchy of some sort and are going around killing the trans women they find for fear of them wolf-zombying out on them. We follow two trans women main characters, Beth and Fran, quickly followed by a trans man, Robbie, their woman friend and hormone supplier Indi, and Ramona, one of the baddies who is actually a chaser who ends up betraying her camp to get some transgendered ass, literally. And... Not much happens, really, that resembles a plot. Random events happen, so that lots of sex (and gross sex) can happen, and then BAM! some final localised showdown between the baddie TERFs and the trans people + allies, with zero consequences for the wider world or the future of said world.
This book is supposed to be the author's answer to the lack of trans representation in the niche genre of "sex-based apocalypse fiction". A) That's not at all what this is, but I'll get back to that; B) It's a flawed premise in the sense trans people are represented, covertly, in that genre - just not in the way some would like. In The End of Men, where the plague latches onto the Y chromosome, trans women exist, but they die along with the men, because they are male humans.
Also, this book is sold as horror, but it honestly felt more like porn to me at times. At the very least it's... I don't know, horror-porn? There is so much pointless, grossly-described sex in this book. To say it's gratuitous is an understatement. Ex: He paused, open mouth full of half-chewed mush. Beth wondered if he breathed through his nose that loud when he sucked cock. 🤦♀️ It's all kinky shit too (no offence to BDSMers, but the specific kind displayed in Manhunt was really not my cup of tea), with power-play involving constant references to "mommies" and "daddies". Fuck's sake! 🤮 In any case the book is certainly not scarier than something like The Walking Dead, nor even as gory. Honestly I was taken aback by the sex, and clear contempt, not to say hatred, that permeated the page, not the relatively mild splattering of body parts implied by this supposedly being "splatterpunk".
1) Plot:
What plot?
No, I mean seriously, what actual plot? Beth and Fran collect testicles to extract oestrogen (like that would actually work, even the crazy fucks who sold testosterone as an elixir of youth back when sex steroids were first discovered would create a solution out of balls and inject it sub-dermally, not eat the gonads raw and let their stomach acids ruin their contents), Robbie saves them from marauding zombie-werewolves (but not before Beth gets graphically anally raped, and mildly gets off on it, of course), then the trio leaves with their bud Indi to go to a bunker held by a crazy rich kid when the TERFs roll into their town, the TERF character fucks a non-binary male prostitute, feels bad about it, leads a hit squad and gets in gud with the leader called Teach, then shit with the bunker goes south, the protags hole up by this old WW II fort and face a final showdown with the TERF army who got themselves a shiny battleship, but not before the chaser TERF betrays her side, ultimately turning the tables and allowing the protags, minus the trans woman Fran, to see another day in this idiotic world the author has created. This thing was so boring at times, filled as it was - in-between the porn and Twitter screeding - with absurd similes, pointless descriptions and emotionless flashbacks.
2) Writing:
The writing was really bad in places, fine in others. But oh my gods the similes... And the repetitions... And the immature, "edgy-because-I-can" language. Did you know fellow readers that a gun shot sounds like a tiny fluffy dog (a bichon frisé, to be exact)? Or that frying something in a pan sounds like small mouths smacking? 🤦♀️ I've also learned that every other person has skin that smells like milk, or that they taste like milk (huh?). Or that zombie-werewolf men would have breath that smells like cum (because that totally makes sense?). Everyone also has stretch marks bloody everywhere.
The word cunt is also used all. The. Bloody. Time. It's not even that it offends me so much, because it doesn't really, it's just that it's so clearly, artlessly meant to be vulgar and edgy - this ain't D.H.Lawrence material folks. And not only do the trans women say cunt all of the time, the women do too, even the American radical feminists who I'm pretty sure loathe the word. Every female refers to their own vulva as a cunt, and refers to other women as bitches and cunts all of the time. #justwomanthings amirite?! 🥴 (Periods are also referenced a suspicious - read fetishistic - amount of times)
Another sin in my book is using the word girl when referring to grown-arse women (or trans women). Because here again it is done all. Of. The. Bloody. Time. To the point where you really do start to wonder if it's not a fetish for the author (because it probably is, as is all of the porn content in the book really). Women in their 30s! All the time! Fuck's sake. Yes women sometimes call each other girls (and I hate it), but absolutely not to the extent the author uses. It is infantilising, disrespectful and gross, especially when plonked into this kind of sentence:
Fuck me so I can feel like a girl. 🤮🤮🤮 Like I'm sorry but who the fuck thinks this kind of thing after having been violently anally raped by a bunch of zombie-werewolves?! It is so freaking disgusting and creepy.
This book will also (quite to the contrary of what the author seems to believe on Twitter) become completely irrelevant in a few years, chock-full as it is with American younger Millennial/Zoomer idpol-wars "discourse" and pop-media references that don't mean jack-shit to the majority of people. And there are multiple, poorly established time-jumps and shit, not that I really cared.
3) Character-work:
This book is misogynistic, absolutely, but it's also lesbophobic, fatphobic (never thought I'd use that word but here we are), a little misandrist too and even, I would argue, transphobic! Yup.
Not only does the author clearly imply, several times, that trans women are not really women (which is considered transphobic these days, yes?), ironically but hilariously enough; she constantly stresses how Beth doesn't pass, how both her and Fran have to prove or acquire their womanhood, because deep down they know they're not really women. She constantly describes trans women characters in very unflattering terms, emphasising their masculine traits. And even more ironically, she made Beth and Fran to be absolute stereotypes, playing right into her ideological opponent's hands. 😂
Beth, Fran (and Robbie too honestly) are unsympathetic, vain, conceited, narcissistic sex pests who only think about the fact they can't fully transition now the Apocalypse has happened, or fucking (popping boners at the same time, #justwomanthings) when they're about to die or kill someone else (no, seriously). Beth also, you know, broke another kid's jaw when she was six, over a toy car, and Robbie both assaulted a teenager with a nail gun at school and committed arson, burning an entire house down when he was younger. Charming, totally not mentally unstable people, right? Like for real, I was supposed to care/root for these creeps? Their virtue-signalling Indian doctor buddy wasn't much better: like how do you remain morbidly obese for five years after an apocalypse if it's not by hoarding food? And that's another thing: the author spends just so much time detailing the obesity of her character, lingering on it in a really unsettling, and quite honestly fetishising way. Gross. But yes Indi converts ball juice into oestrogen, is a fertility specialist but like... Never tries to help out by figuring out a way to keep humans reproducing? No? Can only bitch about white women and thirst, "cunt dripping" as cunts do (not, the author deserves a spot on r/badwomensanatomy, and r/transwomenwritingwomen I guess) after her submissive trans girlfriend. And the betrayer TERF Ramona is also a gross sex pest who calls herself a lesbian but secretly thirsts for transsexual dick (as all lesbians do, n'est-ce pas?).
Even the villains aren't convincing. They're cartoonishly evil, is the problem. Like the head baddie who helms a platoon of TERFs for the Matriarchy of Maryland or some shit, called Teach, used to work at Guantanamo. For real bruh? Oh, she also used to be buds with Janice fucking Raymond. Like anyone outside of this debate is going to fucking know who that even is (no offence to her). It's so bloody irrelevant, not to mention stupid, Jesus! 🤦♀️ It's not as bad as the "Knights of J.K.Rowling" I suppose. Like freaking hell, talk about unsubtle... It's so bloody unrealistic and immersion-breaking, how is anyone supposed to take that seriously?! However much genderists cry about it, J.K.Rowling is not considered evil by the majority of people, and Harry Potter has entered the canon of classical children's fiction whether you like it or not. Grow up and get the fuck over it.
Let's be real, most everyone is hateful in the book - though again not precisely in the way the author intended I bet. The trans protags are perverts and psychos - Beth strangles a woman for no reason and laughs while doing it, I kid you not. Robbie says this: If he'd spent his time preparing for anything since the end of the world, shooting a bunch of screaming cis idiots was it. (Add "cisphobia" to the list of offences). Ramona is a pervert and psycho. Teach goes through a "Daenerys Targaryen in Season 08" nonsensical arc-spurt and turns über-evil towards the end as she rips the uterus of a woman out, still alive, to punish betrayal (it doesn't make sense for several reasons, but it doesn't have to I guess). I honestly hoped everyone would die by the end, but the author had to give some plot armour to his protags, duh - even though realistically the military-trained TERFs with actual firearms should've won because that's just freaking logical - just de-power your baddies if you want to make it convincing! 🙄
The TERFs/radfems aren't portrayed accurately at all, they're just made to be cartoonishly evil, yet even then they have very valid reasons to be wary of trans women (world-building in a sec). And the trans characters are huge stereotypes that basically confirm the fears women have about some of them: Beth and Fran are textbook AGPs with unhinged fantasies and questionable boundaries, Robbie is rage-filled and narcissistic. Great trans representation, really?!
4) World-building:
There is none. I'm serious. Nothing makes any fucking sense in this story: elements of the world-building are tweaked and plot contrivances inserted any time the author needs to link up fetish sex scenes, violence or Twitter screeding, and that is it.
- The virus makes no sense (for one it only affects humans). The premise of binding it to testosterone levels fails on so many fronts, and is clearly meant to be a(n offensive at times) proxy for masculinity. The thing is, I recently read a book that explains clearly why it's not a good proxy for masculinity at all, and that sex steroids are much more subtle and complex than we think. We are told that basically all men have succumbed to the virus, except some born after the outbreak. Yet trans women, as long as they get their oestrogen, are safe. But women with PCOS aren't (trans women are more womanly than women with PCOS, it's a well-known fact right? 🙄). The author states that the virus binds to elevated levels of testosterone, and even that a post-op trans woman had zombied out in the past, on television. So how the fuck does that work?! Women with PCOS will never have the levels of testosterone men have. And 75% of trans women cannot get their testosterone levels down to female-typical levels, even with medication! At the very least, Beth and Fran should've cut their testicles off as a security measure, so why didn't they (especially since we learn Fran defo wants bottom surgery)? How the fuck are they still alive, honestly? Also we're told Fran contracted the virus but got better, but it's never mentioned again...
- Here's another kicker: the men affected grow barbs on their dongs (their dicks can also grow up to 11 inches, just because), run on all fours (there's zero reason for this, we are not adapted, skeletally, to run efficiently on all fours) and if they impregnate a woman, a male baby will chew its way out of her womb in three months' time and become sexually mature at 1 year of age. 🤦♀️ But why?! Why would a virus "go" to all this trouble, when it seems it has mostly been airborne until now? Like how did men even start contracting this thing? What's the bloody point of this detail? I mean fuck it the best explanation I've got is that barbed dicks are a fetish for the author (just like rape, check what she's said on the matter if you don't believe me) and the rest is just so it can be shocking/gross for the sake of it. The contempt for men is also very clear, because all of them are reduced to these beasts, and a character suggests that they can now happily rape and murder like they've always wanted deep down. Nice huh?
- The very fact TERFs are a "force" of any kind in a post-apocalyptic world is laughably ridiculous, so are people caring about them and trans rights. Bitch please. People would care about survival, and reproduction in this context. Why is no one searching for a cure? Why is no one researching how to keep the species going? Hell, why aren't the TERFs using trans women as sperm donors rather than prostitutes? Why haven't some men managed to survive by castrating themselves, but without identifying as the opposite sex? I mean that's kind of the case with the sons of the women living in protected zones, but they transgender them, why? Like there's no reason for it, especially since it is TERFs doing it?! Like hello, why would they make trans women and use them as guards? It makes no bloody sense. Nor does calling them Maenads. 🤦♀️ Like for fuck's sake, put some effort into it! Why the hell would radical feminists use a term referring to devotees of a male god, when the Galli, eunuch devotees of the great goddess Demeter, existed too? Nor does using trans women and enbys as prostitutes. Again, for fuck's sake: the TERFs of this book are straw women in the purest sense of the word. It is a well-known fact that radical feminists tend to be very sex-critical, anti-porn, anti-sex work and kink-critical. A polity founded along their beliefs would exclude prostitution! (Not to mention in the real world, women use prostitutes a lot less than men do, but the author doesn't have a good grasp on female psychology, to say the least).
- And they are sympathetic, because fundamentally, they want to protect the women who remain. The author literally gave - and this is once again ironically hilarious - the TERFs an objective and valid reason to fear all trans women. As biological males, they can absolutely zombie-wolf out into raping and killing monsters. The author obviously wanted to poo-poo feminists who wish to defend female-only spaces, but her argument cannot land effectively, because I repeat: women have a very good reason, post t-rex virus, to see all trans women as potential threats. Of course, when Beth is thrown out of her queer-friendly communal house, all she can think of is herself, and doesn't show the least ounce of empathy towards the women who are scared and losing their male relatives left, right and centre. Contrast this to a character in The End of Men who sacrifices her bond to her husband, her need for comfort and reassurance, to try and save her son. Just sayin'.
Conclusion: Have to wrap this up. If a man had written this, hell if a woman had written this, it would've gotten torn to shreds by the Wokesters. In an age when it's cool to shit on Lovecraft, a dude dead almost a century, for his racist views, how the fuck is this book where white women, old women, hell women who are simply guilty of perceived "wrongthink" are endlessly mentioned with contempt and lust-fuelled hatred - because this is nothing but a personal, sexual kink-infused and Twitter-outraged revenge fantasy - not held to the same standard?! Because this is misogyny (and lesbophobia, and misandry, and cisphobia and transphobia) approved by the Woke Left. This was a diversity publication, nothing more. Shame on Tor. (Though hey, should give encouragement to aspiring writers that garbage like this can be published by a reputable publishing house 🤷♀️).
Disclaimer: I read this primarily because Normal People was making my grief and depression worse, and I needed some trash to distract my broken heart. So yes, I went in fully expecting this to be bad - though not quite as bad as it turned out to be -, and as an autistic, gender-critical feminist (so technically one of the book's "baddies" lmao) who has this whole debate as one of her very niche special interests. Y'all ready?
I've read my fair share of sex-based plague/power-shift stories over the past couple of years (The Power, The Screwfly Solution, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, Y: The Last Man and The End of Men). I've been disappointed about as equally as I've been satisfied by them: what often fails for me is the superficiality of the theming and the flimsiness of the world-building, The Power and The End of Men were especially guilty of that... But holy shit does Manhunt take the cake here.
Manhunt, a text that tries to be a queered up and porned up amalgamation of Y: The Last Man, The Screwfly Solution and The Walking Dead, presents the reader with a world where a pathogen, the t-rex (really? 🙄) virus transforms anyone with high-enough testosterone levels into an über-aggressive, dehumanised hybrid between a zombie and a werewolf that wants to rape, eat and kill (not necessarily in that order) anything that has a hole between their legs. In practice however, that just means men and... pre-op trans women, but not really because mile-wide holes in the world-building. The remaining women and trans people have to survive in a very ugly world where groups of so-called TERFs (never defined for normies of course) have established a matriarchy of some sort and are going around killing the trans women they find for fear of them wolf-zombying out on them. We follow two trans women main characters, Beth and Fran, quickly followed by a trans man, Robbie, their woman friend and hormone supplier Indi, and Ramona, one of the baddies who is actually a chaser who ends up betraying her camp to get some transgendered ass, literally. And... Not much happens, really, that resembles a plot. Random events happen, so that lots of sex (and gross sex) can happen, and then BAM! some final localised showdown between the baddie TERFs and the trans people + allies, with zero consequences for the wider world or the future of said world.
This book is supposed to be the author's answer to the lack of trans representation in the niche genre of "sex-based apocalypse fiction". A) That's not at all what this is, but I'll get back to that; B) It's a flawed premise in the sense trans people are represented, covertly, in that genre - just not in the way some would like. In The End of Men, where the plague latches onto the Y chromosome, trans women exist, but they die along with the men, because they are male humans.
Also, this book is sold as horror, but it honestly felt more like porn to me at times. At the very least it's... I don't know, horror-porn? There is so much pointless, grossly-described sex in this book. To say it's gratuitous is an understatement. Ex: He paused, open mouth full of half-chewed mush. Beth wondered if he breathed through his nose that loud when he sucked cock. 🤦♀️ It's all kinky shit too (no offence to BDSMers, but the specific kind displayed in Manhunt was really not my cup of tea), with power-play involving constant references to "mommies" and "daddies". Fuck's sake! 🤮 In any case the book is certainly not scarier than something like The Walking Dead, nor even as gory. Honestly I was taken aback by the sex, and clear contempt, not to say hatred, that permeated the page, not the relatively mild splattering of body parts implied by this supposedly being "splatterpunk".
1) Plot:
What plot?
No, I mean seriously, what actual plot? Beth and Fran collect testicles to extract oestrogen (like that would actually work, even the crazy fucks who sold testosterone as an elixir of youth back when sex steroids were first discovered would create a solution out of balls and inject it sub-dermally, not eat the gonads raw and let their stomach acids ruin their contents), Robbie saves them from marauding zombie-werewolves (but not before Beth gets graphically anally raped, and mildly gets off on it, of course), then the trio leaves with their bud Indi to go to a bunker held by a crazy rich kid when the TERFs roll into their town, the TERF character fucks a non-binary male prostitute, feels bad about it, leads a hit squad and gets in gud with the leader called Teach, then shit with the bunker goes south, the protags hole up by this old WW II fort and face a final showdown with the TERF army who got themselves a shiny battleship, but not before the chaser TERF betrays her side, ultimately turning the tables and allowing the protags, minus the trans woman Fran, to see another day in this idiotic world the author has created. This thing was so boring at times, filled as it was - in-between the porn and Twitter screeding - with absurd similes, pointless descriptions and emotionless flashbacks.
2) Writing:
The writing was really bad in places, fine in others. But oh my gods the similes... And the repetitions... And the immature, "edgy-because-I-can" language. Did you know fellow readers that a gun shot sounds like a tiny fluffy dog (a bichon frisé, to be exact)? Or that frying something in a pan sounds like small mouths smacking? 🤦♀️ I've also learned that every other person has skin that smells like milk, or that they taste like milk (huh?). Or that zombie-werewolf men would have breath that smells like cum (because that totally makes sense?). Everyone also has stretch marks bloody everywhere.
The word cunt is also used all. The. Bloody. Time. It's not even that it offends me so much, because it doesn't really, it's just that it's so clearly, artlessly meant to be vulgar and edgy - this ain't D.H.Lawrence material folks. And not only do the trans women say cunt all of the time, the women do too, even the American radical feminists who I'm pretty sure loathe the word. Every female refers to their own vulva as a cunt, and refers to other women as bitches and cunts all of the time. #justwomanthings amirite?! 🥴 (Periods are also referenced a suspicious - read fetishistic - amount of times)
Another sin in my book is using the word girl when referring to grown-arse women (or trans women). Because here again it is done all. Of. The. Bloody. Time. To the point where you really do start to wonder if it's not a fetish for the author (because it probably is, as is all of the porn content in the book really). Women in their 30s! All the time! Fuck's sake. Yes women sometimes call each other girls (and I hate it), but absolutely not to the extent the author uses. It is infantilising, disrespectful and gross, especially when plonked into this kind of sentence:
Fuck me so I can feel like a girl. 🤮🤮🤮 Like I'm sorry but who the fuck thinks this kind of thing after having been violently anally raped by a bunch of zombie-werewolves?! It is so freaking disgusting and creepy.
This book will also (quite to the contrary of what the author seems to believe on Twitter) become completely irrelevant in a few years, chock-full as it is with American younger Millennial/Zoomer idpol-wars "discourse" and pop-media references that don't mean jack-shit to the majority of people. And there are multiple, poorly established time-jumps and shit, not that I really cared.
3) Character-work:
This book is misogynistic, absolutely, but it's also lesbophobic, fatphobic (never thought I'd use that word but here we are), a little misandrist too and even, I would argue, transphobic! Yup.
Not only does the author clearly imply, several times, that trans women are not really women (which is considered transphobic these days, yes?), ironically but hilariously enough; she constantly stresses how Beth doesn't pass, how both her and Fran have to prove or acquire their womanhood, because deep down they know they're not really women. She constantly describes trans women characters in very unflattering terms, emphasising their masculine traits. And even more ironically, she made Beth and Fran to be absolute stereotypes, playing right into her ideological opponent's hands. 😂
Beth, Fran (and Robbie too honestly) are unsympathetic, vain, conceited, narcissistic sex pests who only think about the fact they can't fully transition now the Apocalypse has happened, or fucking (popping boners at the same time, #justwomanthings) when they're about to die or kill someone else (no, seriously). Beth also, you know, broke another kid's jaw when she was six, over a toy car, and Robbie both assaulted a teenager with a nail gun at school and committed arson, burning an entire house down when he was younger. Charming, totally not mentally unstable people, right? Like for real, I was supposed to care/root for these creeps? Their virtue-signalling Indian doctor buddy wasn't much better: like how do you remain morbidly obese for five years after an apocalypse if it's not by hoarding food? And that's another thing: the author spends just so much time detailing the obesity of her character, lingering on it in a really unsettling, and quite honestly fetishising way. Gross. But yes Indi converts ball juice into oestrogen, is a fertility specialist but like... Never tries to help out by figuring out a way to keep humans reproducing? No? Can only bitch about white women and thirst, "cunt dripping" as cunts do (not, the author deserves a spot on r/badwomensanatomy, and r/transwomenwritingwomen I guess) after her submissive trans girlfriend. And the betrayer TERF Ramona is also a gross sex pest who calls herself a lesbian but secretly thirsts for transsexual dick (as all lesbians do, n'est-ce pas?).
Even the villains aren't convincing. They're cartoonishly evil, is the problem. Like the head baddie who helms a platoon of TERFs for the Matriarchy of Maryland or some shit, called Teach, used to work at Guantanamo. For real bruh? Oh, she also used to be buds with Janice fucking Raymond. Like anyone outside of this debate is going to fucking know who that even is (no offence to her). It's so bloody irrelevant, not to mention stupid, Jesus! 🤦♀️ It's not as bad as the "Knights of J.K.Rowling" I suppose. Like freaking hell, talk about unsubtle... It's so bloody unrealistic and immersion-breaking, how is anyone supposed to take that seriously?! However much genderists cry about it, J.K.Rowling is not considered evil by the majority of people, and Harry Potter has entered the canon of classical children's fiction whether you like it or not. Grow up and get the fuck over it.
Let's be real, most everyone is hateful in the book - though again not precisely in the way the author intended I bet. The trans protags are perverts and psychos - Beth strangles a woman for no reason and laughs while doing it, I kid you not. Robbie says this: If he'd spent his time preparing for anything since the end of the world, shooting a bunch of screaming cis idiots was it. (Add "cisphobia" to the list of offences). Ramona is a pervert and psycho. Teach goes through a "Daenerys Targaryen in Season 08" nonsensical arc-spurt and turns über-evil towards the end as she rips the uterus of a woman out, still alive, to punish betrayal (it doesn't make sense for several reasons, but it doesn't have to I guess). I honestly hoped everyone would die by the end, but the author had to give some plot armour to his protags, duh - even though realistically the military-trained TERFs with actual firearms should've won because that's just freaking logical - just de-power your baddies if you want to make it convincing! 🙄
The TERFs/radfems aren't portrayed accurately at all, they're just made to be cartoonishly evil, yet even then they have very valid reasons to be wary of trans women (world-building in a sec). And the trans characters are huge stereotypes that basically confirm the fears women have about some of them: Beth and Fran are textbook AGPs with unhinged fantasies and questionable boundaries, Robbie is rage-filled and narcissistic. Great trans representation, really?!
4) World-building:
There is none. I'm serious. Nothing makes any fucking sense in this story: elements of the world-building are tweaked and plot contrivances inserted any time the author needs to link up fetish sex scenes, violence or Twitter screeding, and that is it.
- The virus makes no sense (for one it only affects humans). The premise of binding it to testosterone levels fails on so many fronts, and is clearly meant to be a(n offensive at times) proxy for masculinity. The thing is, I recently read a book that explains clearly why it's not a good proxy for masculinity at all, and that sex steroids are much more subtle and complex than we think. We are told that basically all men have succumbed to the virus, except some born after the outbreak. Yet trans women, as long as they get their oestrogen, are safe. But women with PCOS aren't (trans women are more womanly than women with PCOS, it's a well-known fact right? 🙄). The author states that the virus binds to elevated levels of testosterone, and even that a post-op trans woman had zombied out in the past, on television. So how the fuck does that work?! Women with PCOS will never have the levels of testosterone men have. And 75% of trans women cannot get their testosterone levels down to female-typical levels, even with medication! At the very least, Beth and Fran should've cut their testicles off as a security measure, so why didn't they (especially since we learn Fran defo wants bottom surgery)? How the fuck are they still alive, honestly? Also we're told Fran contracted the virus but got better, but it's never mentioned again...
- Here's another kicker: the men affected grow barbs on their dongs (their dicks can also grow up to 11 inches, just because), run on all fours (there's zero reason for this, we are not adapted, skeletally, to run efficiently on all fours) and if they impregnate a woman, a male baby will chew its way out of her womb in three months' time and become sexually mature at 1 year of age. 🤦♀️ But why?! Why would a virus "go" to all this trouble, when it seems it has mostly been airborne until now? Like how did men even start contracting this thing? What's the bloody point of this detail? I mean fuck it the best explanation I've got is that barbed dicks are a fetish for the author (just like rape, check what she's said on the matter if you don't believe me) and the rest is just so it can be shocking/gross for the sake of it. The contempt for men is also very clear, because all of them are reduced to these beasts, and a character suggests that they can now happily rape and murder like they've always wanted deep down. Nice huh?
- The very fact TERFs are a "force" of any kind in a post-apocalyptic world is laughably ridiculous, so are people caring about them and trans rights. Bitch please. People would care about survival, and reproduction in this context. Why is no one searching for a cure? Why is no one researching how to keep the species going? Hell, why aren't the TERFs using trans women as sperm donors rather than prostitutes? Why haven't some men managed to survive by castrating themselves, but without identifying as the opposite sex? I mean that's kind of the case with the sons of the women living in protected zones, but they transgender them, why? Like there's no reason for it, especially since it is TERFs doing it?! Like hello, why would they make trans women and use them as guards? It makes no bloody sense. Nor does calling them Maenads. 🤦♀️ Like for fuck's sake, put some effort into it! Why the hell would radical feminists use a term referring to devotees of a male god, when the Galli, eunuch devotees of the great goddess Demeter, existed too? Nor does using trans women and enbys as prostitutes. Again, for fuck's sake: the TERFs of this book are straw women in the purest sense of the word. It is a well-known fact that radical feminists tend to be very sex-critical, anti-porn, anti-sex work and kink-critical. A polity founded along their beliefs would exclude prostitution! (Not to mention in the real world, women use prostitutes a lot less than men do, but the author doesn't have a good grasp on female psychology, to say the least).
- And they are sympathetic, because fundamentally, they want to protect the women who remain. The author literally gave - and this is once again ironically hilarious - the TERFs an objective and valid reason to fear all trans women. As biological males, they can absolutely zombie-wolf out into raping and killing monsters. The author obviously wanted to poo-poo feminists who wish to defend female-only spaces, but her argument cannot land effectively, because I repeat: women have a very good reason, post t-rex virus, to see all trans women as potential threats. Of course, when Beth is thrown out of her queer-friendly communal house, all she can think of is herself, and doesn't show the least ounce of empathy towards the women who are scared and losing their male relatives left, right and centre. Contrast this to a character in The End of Men who sacrifices her bond to her husband, her need for comfort and reassurance, to try and save her son. Just sayin'.
Conclusion: Have to wrap this up. If a man had written this, hell if a woman had written this, it would've gotten torn to shreds by the Wokesters. In an age when it's cool to shit on Lovecraft, a dude dead almost a century, for his racist views, how the fuck is this book where white women, old women, hell women who are simply guilty of perceived "wrongthink" are endlessly mentioned with contempt and lust-fuelled hatred - because this is nothing but a personal, sexual kink-infused and Twitter-outraged revenge fantasy - not held to the same standard?! Because this is misogyny (and lesbophobia, and misandry, and cisphobia and transphobia) approved by the Woke Left. This was a diversity publication, nothing more. Shame on Tor. (Though hey, should give encouragement to aspiring writers that garbage like this can be published by a reputable publishing house 🤷♀️).
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Cursing, Death, Fatphobia, Gore, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Transphobia, Violence, Cannibalism, Murder, Pregnancy, Lesbophobia, Dysphoria, and Classism
Very misogynistic, lesbophobic, misandrist, cisphobic and transphobic. Fetish-writing and Twitter-screeding do not literature make.madisonhh666's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Body shaming, Bullying, Cursing, Deadnaming, Death, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Transphobia, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Murder, Lesbophobia, Outing, Sexual harassment, War, and Injury/Injury detail