Book Review: Manhunt

Image: The hilarious cover of this book is a dark navy blue background. In the center is a netted bag of two apples positioned to resemble testicles. Across the top in scrawled white letters is "Gretchen Felker-Martin." Across the bottom in larger scrawled yellow letters with tinges of red splatter is "Manhunt." Below that in small printed letters is, "the end of the world is nuts."

Manhunt is not necessarily what I would call an “enjoyable” book. It’s hard to apply such a word to any sort of post apocalyptic horror story, especially when so much of it mimics a reality that hits close to home. Of all post apocalypse scenarios, for me, zombies are the least likely and as a result, the least scary. What is appealing and truly scary about post apocalypse stories, is how regular people act. Now, we could think hard about how to truly conceptualize a world like this with an optimistic lens involving room for some sort of utopia. But, most of us alive in the world today know that even if we find a space for utopia, we’re gonna have to fight for it.

The description for Manhunt says, Y the Last Man meets The Girl with all the Gifts and I both agree and dislike this comparison. First off, I think this book is so original and well written in its telling of Trans, Queer, and LGB stories in this unreal post apocalyptic horror landscape that it stands on its own. However, I see how both of those comparisons fit. The differences are first off that both of those books are written by men. In the film version of TGWATG, Melanie is Black making the end of the movie an original fantastical liberation story for the little zombie hybrid children. In the book, Miss Justineau is Black and the little girl is a blonde white girl, so the story isnt quite as subversive though I guess there’s a grey area in who the monster is portrayed as. The YTLM books are full of problematic elements based on chromosomes both because it’s a dated series and Brian K Vaughn (despite my love for may of his works like Saga) has a history of writing broey things sometimes. The TV show tried but could not correct these things and thus only lasted one season (but, I also admit I liked the show and both the book and movie of TGWATG because I’m p r o b l e m a t i c.)

Manhunt is different. Manhunt conceptualizes a scenario that actually makes sense and is as realistic is it could be where a zombie-adjacent plague affects people who are testosterone dominant, allowing for a complex scenario where it is predominantly cis men who die or are turned into ravenous rage zombies and also some hormone deficient trans women and hormonally transitioning trans men and others who don’t stop T in time- mostly before the plague is understood. It is also a scenario where trans men who stop T can survive and remain as authentic male characters, trans women can survive if they are able to supplement hormones (often in a disgusting way mind you far worse than horse urine or synthetics,) and still remain authentic women characters, and cis women TERFs are emboldened in their war against trans people- particularly trans women- with the plague as a convenient pretext. This is the Y the Last Man that today’s world really deserved if we are gonna insist on adding that title to the comparison.

The strengths of the book are not just in it’s creative conception of this scenario, but also in the characters. There are real descriptions of trans fears, loves, experiences, struggles, and comradery. It tells a story of horrors and abuses full of very difficult and often gorey occurrences. I often don’t stick around for things like sexual assault, gorey violence, etc, but I could not step away from this story because of the rich world it created outside of these things. The author creates a world where there is a real and nuanced war between trans women, their accomplices, and TERFs complete with TE radical feminist war cries and complex scenarios where you are both rooting for the trans folks side and also understand the people they are up against and how they came to believe the things they do. There are also moments of dark humor at the ridiculousness of it all. Sometimes all you can do is laugh to survive. Similar to TGWATG, there are monstrous things that are possible, but can be prevented allowing for the humanity of those at risk. But, unlike TGWATG, there is a simple solution to trans women getting to live free of becoming a threat and it’s just one simple chemical. The man zombies don’t need to take over the world. But, neither do trans women or TERFs. 

 I am not going to tell much more of the story than that because I want to avoid spoilers. But, overall this book is a great read if you can stand all of the truly horrific elements including sexual and other violence, trans antagonism, disgusting gore, and lots of dysphoria. 

This was also posted to my goodreads.