A review by agavemonster
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

dark emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

What a read! Touched and disturbed me, and made me confront the ways in which I have failed to live up to my values about my trans siblings. I found the book somber and cruel but not heartless, the depiction of apocalypse unusually clear-sighted, and the "victory" at the end more heartbreaking than victorious. The gore and body horror, which are indeed graphic, could not be removed without damaging our empathy and embodiment with the characters. Other reviewers have called the book's tone depressing or bitter; I think that the end of the world was/is/will be painful, and people suffer and make each other suffer, even people who love each other, and to depict that other than truthfully is an injustice.

A few minor annoyances:

  • Semi-frequent image and phrase repetition: things and people smell or look like milk, the men-beasts are always described with the same few adjectives, hair is "cornsilk." The only niggling distraction from otherwise fabulously fluid and visceral prose
  • Teach's motivation seemed flimsy and one-dimensionally rage monster, especially when compared to deputy Ramona, who was deeply grotesque and complex in her anesthetization, denial, anger, and self-pitying lashing out. Teach's one brief POV scene at the end weakened rather than strengthened her character. Would have liked her point of view to be more developed and three-dimensional. People who hate another type of person enough to commit genocide usually have a mess of complex thoughts about that type of person, not just one-dimensional disgust
  • Several times, the men busted in at the perfect moment and "saved the day" for the protags by distracting or attacking their intelligent enemies in a way that struck me as a little contrived
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