Manhunt

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 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.

I have never read Y: The Last Man, but I have always loved the premise and have wondered what would happen to trans people and people of different gender experiences during an apocalyptic plague that only effects a certain gendered part of the population, in this case men or people with high testosterone. We begin with two best friends, Beth and Fran, trans women, trying to survive in New England. They are manhunters. For reasons I won't go into here, they kill the infected men and harvest certain parts of them. Any time they are out hunting, they are in terrible danger. There are not just infected men that pose a threat, but also bands of TERFs scouting certain areas, as well as other general apocalypse survivors. Enter Robbie, who 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. Content warning for graphic transphobia, graphic rape, gore, animal death, suicide, brief antisemitism and self-harm. There were definitely moments in this story that felt like it was just listing off trans feminist buzzwords, but I admire that this book doesn’t water itself down for anyone’s comfort. I admit that this story sounds cheesy on paper and potentially like what a liberal feminist caricature of a young angsty trans teen on Tumblr would write (especially with certain pop culture references), but Gretchen Felker-Martin does a great job at breathing life into this story and concept. I admit that I am aware of the author’s bad behaviour online (and I’m not going to go into extensive detail about it here), but I decided to continue on and read this book because I loved the idea of an own voices trans story in the horror genre, especially one with a post-apocalyptic setting. I am a firm believer in separating the art from the artist (while occasionally acknowledging and analyzing a piece of art with the context of the artist’s identity), especially since there are ways of reading and experiencing a book without monetarily compensating or supporting the author. The writing style does feel similar to the author’s own Twitter tirades, but I feel like this energy charged the novel with something unique and it successfully translated into a distinctive atmosphere, tone and vibe. This book won't be for everyone, not just because it's bleak, splatter horror, but because if you're not trans or know a lot of trans people and understand modern trans culture, it won't hit the same. The entire book feels like the worst TERF hate spiral come to apocalyptic life. You need to know TERF ideology and language. You need to know about the trans experience beyond the surface level stuff. I anticipate that a lot of people will come away from this book (or will abandon it partially-read) angry and/or confused because they just don't get it, and that's not the author’s fault. As a cis man, I admit that this book will be more effective for trans people, but I think that anyone who loves a trans person or knows a trans person will find this story worthwhile. I loved the unflinching gore because it successfully establishes the tone of this post-apocalyptic world. There were moments where I struggled to move through the book, the pacing felt a little bit jagged at points and I didn’t quite connect with Fran or Beth until about halfway through the book, and I think that was because the events in Manhunt are quite over the top in their execution. While I understand why, and that this is a mirror of the trans experience overall as opposed to being a realistic singular experience, at points it began feeling more like the author’s commentary and her own aggressions than it did a fictional piece of work. While I would usually celebrate this choice, it was to a point where it felt disruptive. Maybe this is just an example of something that I, as a cis man, cannot understand, but I think that this is an important factor to consider because it felt much more like it was telling me a point of view, rather than showing me. I would have also liked a few calm moments to get to know the characters among all the aggression, especially as the characters are so morally grey that it doesn’t give you much time to really connect to them, or learn if the bad guys really have no redeeming features or complex depths when you look at them for the individual characters they are rather than the wider injustice and hatred they represent. On the other hand, the feeling of never getting to sit down with the characters and get to know them initially reflects the post-apocalyptic and frantic nature of this world that we are dropped in. The characters barely get time to relax and reflect because of their circumstances, so the reader doesn’t really get to either. I appreciate that these trans characters aren’t watered down for mainstream audiences. I like that they didn’t care to focus on using the mainstream “right” or “correct” language to describe themselves or their experiences and just said and expressed what felt right to them. This made them feel more human and complex to me. I loved the concept and premise but I ultimately felt like this story didn’t live up to its massive potential. I could see this becoming a violent, gritty film or series, it’s incredibly cinematic and makes a lot of important comments on gender politics and what it means to be a woman. It wasn’t always my cup of tea, but I think this book will prove itself very important for a lot of people, and I can see students reading and analyzing this book sometime in the near future. I highly recommend this book for LGBT+ readers who want an apocalyptic story focused on trans experiences.

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!

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."

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

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.

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

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