Manhunt

[alaterdate]

Pivoting harshly from V.E. Schwab's Gallant I read Gretchen Felker-Martin's Manhunt.

I found this book through R.S. Benedict's podcast Rite Gud. Perhaps you've heard mention of Benedict and her podcast because of the recent(ish) "Squeecore" conversations. I think I'll make a second post on Squeecore since it's interesting, but I don't want to derail this post.

Manhunt takes place in a post-apocalyptic world plagued by a virus that turns people who produce a certain level of testosterone into vicious zombies. It follows the story of two transwomen fighting to survive in a world that wants them dead, and also there's zombies.

The setting in this book felt to me like "what-if TERFs ruled the world" and it's horrifying. Having their worldview become reality leads to TERFs creating a needlessly cruel society, even worse than the one we live in now. They are the antagonist of this story more than the zombified men and they are accordingly frightening.

However I felt that this story paralleled online discourse more than offline issues, basically it imaginatively runs wild with the feeling of what it's like to be harassed on Twitter and transposes an online sense of lawlessness onto the setting. There's still electricity and cities and people go to work, but the laws are muddled. There are people against TERFs coming into their cities, but TERFs have turned themselves into a military force with ranks and headquarters and are able to kill whomever they please because they have lots of weapons. They essentially brute force their way into control of cities much like they try to do to online communities. Not saying TERFs aren't absolutely despicable in how they influence government policies and social issues, especially in the UK right now, but that to me this story just feels written from an "online headspace" rather than a discussion of offline policies and politics.

I liked this book because the characters are messy and they live in a horrible world where senseless things happen to and around them, but they keep trying to live and love each other through it all. Even when it sucks. I've read a few reviews of this book that ask "What was the purpose of this scene? Of this pain?" and I think that as far as this book is concerned there is no purpose to pain and suffering, it happens and we try our best to go on living. Given how bleak the book can be about this sort of thing it is surprising that some characters get a slice of happiness in the end.

This book is a horror novel and it's very gory and full of shock value, and also has something to say, but overall it feels more like a B-movie than something trying to be really poignant. Which is fine! 3 out of 5 stars.

Comments

[queenlua]

i've been curious about this one, so i appreciate the thoughtful review!