Gretchen Felker-Martin

Y: The Last Man meets The Girl With All the Gifts in Gretchen Felker-Martin's Manhunt, a fast-paced body horror that examines a post-apocalyptic world through the lens of trans women and men trying to survive. Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they'll never face the same fate. Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren't safe. After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics—all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons. A timely, powerful response to every gender-based apocalypse story that failed to consider the existence of transgender and non-binary people, Manhunt is full of body horror, desire, and a grotesque spectrum of pain.

Manhunt

How to immediately endear me to characters forever… fyi 

Apiecalypse Jen

"That fake-punk bitch," Beth growled through gritted teeth as Fran probed at the edges of her wound. "Bet she had white dreads in college. Bet she blogged about how her straight boyfriend 'felt unwelcome' at Pride. Ah, Jesus, that stings!"

Krys C

Indi felt naked in front of the other woman. She'd been working all morning in frayed shorts and an undershirt, and Doe's long, lean body made her painfully aware of every place denim and ribbed cotton bit into her flesh or clung tightly to heavy rolls.  She forced herself not to hunch, not to suck in her belly - it only made them more contemptuous if you tried to hide what couldn't be hidden.  That's why you're dressed like this, idiot, she reminded herself fiercely, fighting the urge to pull her shirt down over the sliver of soft flesh between its hem and the waistband of her shorts. Fat is a weapon.  Disgust is armor

The world is over,  and the only way I can know myself is by hating other women. 

Suddenly, the group of girls fell silent. They parted as smoothly as a set of drapes and a thin, pale woman of unremarkable height, maybe 40 years old, strode through the divided group towards the bikes. She wore crisp fatigues and a short, tight leather jacket zipped up to her collarbones.  On her forehead, dead center above the bridge of her pert little ski slope nose, was a stark tattoo: XX. Pussy certified all-natural by the Daughters of the Witches You Couldn't Burn or whatever Michigan women's music festival bullshit the TERFocracy in Maryland bowed down to. Fuck. 

Was NOT expecting to tear up at the end of this, damn.

clever, fun, occasionally hard to pick back up because of how stomach-turning it was

August Stone

Was NOT expecting to tear up at the end of this, damn.

clever, fun, occasionally hard to pick back up because of how stomach-turning it was

Sarah E

Patrick Book

While there are some issues with the edit and the clarity of some aspects of the story, there’s definitely a ton of commentary and critique happening not far under the gristly, ultra-explicit surface. Very eye-opening and a great showcase for a hugely-promising author.

This book…was super interesting. Warning: long winded review ahead

As a trans person, it was both liberating and exhausting to read this book. I was so pleased that most of the characters are trans as it’s nearly unheard of in fiction as it stands — but boy was it 

. I am not trans femme so I cannot speak to that experience specifically, but still the deeply rooted internalized transphobia and the threat of TERFS was agonizingly relatable. I am also fat and so again, it was great to see a fat character, but there were times it felt maybe gratuitous or verging on anti-fat even though I know it wasn’t the intention as it addresses her personal struggle with existing in a fat body in an anti-fat society. But this book was triggering in so many ways — and sometimes I wondered who it was for. It was for me in that it shares my experience and taps into my specific fears and wants and history, but also not as I often felt alienated and almost mocked by it occasionally. It was sometimes hard to tell the line between poking fun at your own community and just repeating nasty rhetoric. There was also way more semi-explicit sex than I expected. I am of two minds: I don’t want queer/trans sex to be taboo or ignored but I also felt like it was sometimes too much — that it focused so much on bodies and parts and sexualizing being trans in a way I myself have struggled with. Again, just my own experience and reaction, I don’t think it was negative or harmful, I just have my own biases. Overall, I greatly enjoyed it, thought it was a great premise with complex characters that reflected my experience. Heavy and hard to get through at times, but I’m glad I read it all the same.

Bowie 

This book…was super interesting. Warning: long winded review ahead

As a trans person, it was both liberating and exhausting to read this book. I was so pleased that most of the characters are trans as it’s nearly unheard of in fiction as it stands — but boy was it heavy. I am not trans femme so I cannot speak to that experience specifically, but still the deeply rooted internalized transphobia and the threat of TERFS was agonizingly relatable. I am also fat and so again, it was great to see a fat character, but there were times it felt maybe gratuitous or verging on anti-fat even though I know it wasn’t the intention as it addresses her personal struggle with existing in a fat body in an anti-fat society. But this book was triggering in so many ways — and sometimes I wondered who it was for. It was for me in that it shares my experience and taps into my specific fears and wants and history, but also not as I often felt alienated and almost mocked by it occasionally. It was sometimes hard to tell the line between poking fun at your own community and just repeating nasty rhetoric. There was also way more semi-explicit sex than I expected. I am of two minds: I don’t want queer/trans sex to be taboo or ignored but I also felt like it was sometimes too much — that it focused so much on bodies and parts and sexualizing being trans in a way I myself have struggled with. Again, just my own experience and reaction, I don’t think it was negative or harmful, I just have my own biases. Overall, I greatly enjoyed it, thought it was a great premise with complex characters that reflected my experience. Heavy and hard to get through at times, but I’m glad I read it all the same.

Moxie Minion

This book did not come with enough trigger warnings... as a heads up to anyone wanting to pick it up.

I liked the book, I loved the story and the concept, but it was hard to get through. Absolute amount of gorry content there are times that my stomach needed me to take a break. Another quick heads up, this does not translate well into an audio book. The voices and scenes switch quickly and it is just sometimes missed in the audio. I ended up grabbing a digital copy to read instead.

This book was what I thought The Power was going to be and is a similar vibe to Hell Followed With Us. It 

 a horror story though so remember that, because there are a lot of really graphic and really horrifying parts in it. A story of queer and trans post apocalyptic survival after a catastrophic event that cracks the world around testosterone. It’s not going to be for everyone. At times it was really hard for me as a survivor. CW/TW for a lot of trans misogynistic violence and TERF stuff, as well as violence against women, sexual assault, r*pe, domestic violence, dysmorphia, slurs and verbal abuse, as well as graphic sexual content that is consensual. I wouldn’t toss this into a teenage egg’s hands with reckless abandon, but it is a really valid, suspenseful, and ultimately worthwhile story. And the jokes ripping on TERFs alone were some of the best on the market, and made me laugh out loud. 

This book was what I thought The Power was going to be and is a similar vibe to Hell Followed With Us. It is a horror story though so remember that, because there are a lot of really graphic and really horrifying parts in it. A story of queer and trans post apocalyptic survival after a catastrophic event that cracks the world around testosterone. It’s not going to be for everyone. At times it was really hard for me as a survivor. CW/TW for a lot of trans misogynistic violence and TERF stuff, as well as violence against women, sexual assault, r*pe, domestic violence, dysmorphia, slurs and verbal abuse, as well as graphic sexual content that is consensual. I wouldn’t toss this into a teenage egg’s hands with reckless abandon, but it is a really valid, suspenseful, and ultimately worthwhile story. And the jokes ripping on TERFs alone were some of the best on the market, and made me laugh out loud. 

I’ve never read anything else like it. Give me more horror so clearly centered in queer community!

Amelia Hruby

Manhunt is about the end of the world. Y, the Last Man, meets the unsettling world of online to IRL TERFs whose hatred for the different is palpable, dark, and untimately self sabotaging. In this world, a virus has turned all people with a certain level of testosterone into mindless beasts, zombies who rape and pillage and leave nothing but destruction in their wake. 

The book follows two trans women, Fran and Beth, a trans man named Robbie, and their cis friend Indi whose medical knowledge is essential to their survival post the end of the world. The relationships here keep the story going and it weaves itself through the main characters and an antagonist who is both heartbreaking and horrifying to follow. 

My only real complaint was Indi's character - it is noted often how fat Indi is and how this immobilizes her. I would hope that once past the apocalypse, a fat woman wouldn't need or want to hide herself while she eats or feel a great deal of shame about her body. There are so many other pressing matters at hand! But Indi's focus on her body and the book's lurid descriptions were off putting after a while. Still, Indi finds love and is noted to be a hero, her medical knowledge saves the day more than once, I just wish we could have steered at least somewhat away from the internalized fatphobia a bit. 

Otherwise it was a very strong book and a very quick read because I always wantdd to see where things would go. 

Manhunt is about the end of the world. Y, the Last Man, meets the unsettling world of online to IRL TERFs whose hatred for the different is palpable, dark, and untimately self sabotaging. In this world, a virus has turned all people with a certain level of testosterone into mindless beasts, zombies who rape and pillage and leave nothing but destruction in their wake. 

The book follows two trans women, Fran and Beth, a trans man named Robbie, and their cis friend Indi whose medical knowledge is essential to their survival post the end of the world. The relationships here keep the story going and it weaves itself through the main characters and an antagonist who is both heartbreaking and horrifying to follow. 

My only real complaint was Indi's character - it is noted often how fat Indi is and how this immobilizes her. I would hope that once past the apocalypse, a fat woman wouldn't need or want to hide herself while she eats or feel a great deal of shame about her body. There are so many other pressing matters at hand! But Indi's focus on her body and the book's lurid descriptions were off putting after a while. Still, Indi finds love and is noted to be a hero, her medical knowledge saves the day more than once, I just wish we could have steered at least somewhat away from the internalized fatphobia a bit. 

Otherwise it was a very strong book and a very quick read because I always wantdd to see where things would go. 

Latitude Tamarind

This review is by my roommate who uses Formatting, so I'm linking to my blog again, here.

"i could not put this book down. i read it all through my work day, covertly on my phone in front of my computer, staying up far past a responsible bed time to finish it."

Courtney ✿ @librarycutie

is this a joke?!? i’m shocked, disgusted, and sad this exists. literally no, absolutely ick

Y: The Last Man meets The Girl With All the Gifts in Gretchen Felker-Martin's Manhunt, an explosive post-apocalyptic novel that follows trans women and men on a grotesque journey of survival. Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they'll never face the same fate. Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren't safe. After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics—all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons. A timely, powerful response to every gender-based apocalypse story that failed to consider the existence of transgender and non-binary people, Manhunt is full of body horror, desire, and a grotesque spectrum of pain. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Fraser Simons

In this near future dystopia a virus that targets testosterone has ushered in the end of the world. The virus drives them to live in their inhumanity. They travel around consumed and imbalanced raping and pillaging. That’s basically the only conceit you need to accept going into this. What if people with a certain level of testosterone were to essential be infected with a kind of psychosis. 

Two protagonist trans women negotiate this world. Forced to hunt these men to procure estrogen to combat the virus that threatens to transform them into the very thing they hunt. Without access to hormones, it’s this, or simply allowing themselves to become worse than death: the embodiment of physical aggression and conflict and trauma they’ve had to combat their whole lives. 

When they hook up with other trans folx and as well as an outpost of sorts filled with cis women militarized and tyrannically ruled by literal TERFS, meaning they believe they are feminist, yet do not acknowledge any kind of woman that isn’t born to the biologically determinist viewpoint.

The tension is masterful here because there are plenty of cis women that pass this Nazi ideology (and determinism was literally founded and proliferated by Nazi science rhetoric. Look it up. As well as nature versus nurture, etc.), meaning they present as these women think women should—whose bodies produce enough testosterone that makes the virus take them. 

This creates factions that replicate those we see in the real world. The queer community has divisions: passing as cis, primarily, but also being socialized and therefor internalizing patriarchal ideology and exclusionary proclivities. And because this cis exclusionary colony could and should be working together with the trans people, to fight back against their literal common enemy: men, the colonists choose to withhold hormones and murder the trans people; illustrating that they’d rather die than work with people they refuse to see as humans, and as women. Despite… literally not being or behaving like… men. A byproduct of this is that many of the colonists actually need to be rendered more vividly by the author and humanize them more than their views of the trans people, because it is literally, visibly, a rhetoric that makes no sense. They just choose not to help other people that could help them fight against men and devote their time and energy to murdering people that need help.

Another genius byproduct of the virus is that it shows the reader how the issue affects everyone. More than simply trans women. And the hateful rhetoric robs people of their ability to extend empathy to another person, and justify it. But also: how do we determine right now if a person can compete in sports for either gender? By their testosterone level. Which has excluded plenty of cis women from competing as well. 

On top of a well thought out central conceit though, the book is also propulsive. Excellent flow. It reminds me of a pulpy action flick, with actually great, if vivid, gory physical conflicts. Sexual assault is granular as well. There’s a never ending heightening of emotion for absolutely anything the two trans characters go through. The sex is given as equal granularity and the conflicts are, which I thought would be off putting but I think somehow creates a humanization for them. When you could die at any time. And have the threat of sexual assault and death from men be be a spectre, coupled with women also threatening them and, in some cases, fetishizing them as another means of dehumanization—it makes sense to me that sex would be as vividly rendered as the hyper focus of life-and-death situations. 

That said. It is really gruesome. I listened to it on audio and I think that was the right move for me. Because narration (which was excellent by the way) aids in a kind of cinematic, removed perspective, I didn’t get too grossed out like I thought I would. On the page, since it’s self-generated, I’m sure it’d have been more difficult for me. The tragic and heinous things that occur are, as mentioned, equally counter balanced with the loving parts. 

Every person feels three dimensional. No one is unimpeachable. It’s not some kind of power fantasy, when it easily could have been. It is concerned with showing that the real horror is how even when systems erected have passed on institutional knowledge to people, no matter who operates that power, it is inherently dehumanizing, ugly, and evil. It divides people who love one another. It literally kills, while it dehumanizes people in the far more grotesque ways than people are prepared to acknowledge. You simply do not have the option to look away here. It is exactly what horror is supposed to do.

Deborah Kerr

At turns achingly vulnerable and others viciously unrelenting. A journey that I didn’t expect but am glad I went on.


Jordan Card

I was drawn to this book because I heard it was really brutal and gross, which it was! But it was way more fun than I was expecting. Like a story arc from Lost. All of the characters get time and space to be characters and feel real and the whole thing is just satisfying 

Manhunt

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