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A review by everie
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin
adventurous
dark
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
It's violent, it's horny, I thought those were plums on the cover until the literal moment they became relevant in story.
Fran and Beth are trans girls in a post-apocalyptic Maryland where people with high enough levels of testosterone (many) transformed into violent monsters who assault and then literally tear apart anyone left. Also TERFs are more organized and militarized than ever, fuckin goddamn. Shit sucks.
For a book with so many really, really, reeeeallly disgusting moments though, I'm surprised at how...forgettable it was. This is a story we need, but the writing style doesn't really hold up enough to tell it. It also seems to balloon in scope, from two girls and later a trans guy and a doctor traveling together to a bunker, then a guerilla movement fighting back against the TERFs to a full-ass LoTR style battle to the death with two opposing armies and a lot of monster men for some reason like WHAT?? Did we need all this? I don't really care if the head TERF dies on a big ship or in a personal assassination. I don't need a huge battle! I don't really get why it's happening. By the time the beautiful problematique Fran was dying (beautifully), I didn't have much attention span left to care about her.
Also, while I'm here, kinda weird that the only non-binary character is described as always being vacant and like a baby and is always always shown in a bed aside from one moment and sexualized to hell and back AND just a really simple character overall. Like what. What are their desires when they're not interacting with whatsherface, huh. What do they want. ANYway
I think it was at its best when it was telling us about horrible emergency tooth surgery in the woods and horrible friends being horrible, and the every-second threats to a trans girl's life even if she's just trying to live and survive and try to make something beautiful for herself, if that makes sense. I was still with it for the bunker, but the last third......hmmmmmmm.............................
Also sometimes (often) the text was going so full-on internet aren't-I-funny mode that I had to wonder what was going on. It spent a lot of time making up very specific ways to describe people, so much that I often started to skip paragraphs (bc they really were long) to get back to the story. Beware, lest ye become the bowtie-class-warfare (???) debaters that ye mock or whatever
Last thing the horniness really is off the charts. That's a value-neutral statement. Just like breaking the scale. Fluids everywhere.
Fran and Beth are trans girls in a post-apocalyptic Maryland where people with high enough levels of testosterone (many) transformed into violent monsters who assault and then literally tear apart anyone left. Also TERFs are more organized and militarized than ever, fuckin goddamn. Shit sucks.
For a book with so many really, really, reeeeallly disgusting moments though, I'm surprised at how...forgettable it was. This is a story we need, but the writing style doesn't really hold up enough to tell it. It also seems to balloon in scope, from two girls and later a trans guy and a doctor traveling together to a bunker, then a
Also, while I'm here, kinda weird that the only non-binary character is described as always being vacant and like a baby and is always always shown in a bed aside from one moment and sexualized to hell and back AND just a really simple character overall. Like what. What are their desires when they're not interacting with whatsherface, huh. What do they want. ANYway
I think it was at its best when it was telling us about horrible emergency tooth surgery in the woods and horrible friends being horrible, and the every-second threats to a trans girl's life even if she's just trying to live and survive and try to make something beautiful for herself, if that makes sense. I was still with it for the bunker, but the last third......hmmmmmmm.............................
Also sometimes (often) the text was going so full-on internet aren't-I-funny mode that I had to wonder what was going on. It spent a lot of time making up very specific ways to describe people, so much that I often started to skip paragraphs (bc they really were long) to get back to the story. Beware, lest ye become the bowtie-class-warfare (???) debaters that ye mock or whatever
Last thing the horniness really is off the charts. That's a value-neutral statement. Just like breaking the scale. Fluids everywhere.