A review by stuartjrodriguez
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

4.0

This intensely graphic and splattery zombie novel ain’t for everyone, but I also haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, which means it certainly did something right. The splattery-ness of the world will be familiar to anyone who knows and loves The Walking Dead, but the twist—that a virus has turned anyone with enough testosterone in their bodies into feral, raving, slavering monsters whose estrogen must be harvested and processed in order for trans women to avoid succumbing to the virus themselves—is fabulous and gripping. The characters feel very real—they’re messy, they make morally gray, selfish choices, and they try to survive as best they can—and the worldbuilding is exquisitely sticky and richly detailed. Like all the best horror, the terror in this novel doesn’t come just from the zombies—it comes primarily from the people who are left, and the intense plausibility of militarized TERF bigotry.