Easily the coolest book I've read in a long time and I am not one for post-apocalypse pieces. I think the wonder trans rep is something I don't see enough of in this white-cis-male dominated field of horror and I think this was such a beautifully refreshing piece that will be the talk of the town on pub day.

I winced and cringed my way through this. I had nightmares every night after reading it. I had to have another book with me to read during my lunch breaks because I couldn't eat and read this one at the same time.

And it was SO good.

This book does what all good horror does--it pulls out all of these squirmy, awful fears and hold them up to the light like "Yeah, this thing you're deathly afraid of is 100% real and it's definitely going to get you, and here's exactly what that would look like." There's no way to pull punches in a story like that, and it'd be a worse book if it wasn't so gross.

I also loved how entrenched the whole story was in the specific landscape of Massachusetts; a passage about a pre-apocalypse queer cooperative house in the valley made me laugh out loud. The humor is vicious and wonderful and blends seamlessly, somehow, into the misery and gore. This book is the definition of "not for everyone," but it does exactly what it sets out to do, and it does it really well.

Manhunt is going to land on the book world like a wet bag of meat, and I can't wait.

I love everything about this book.

I probably wouldn’t classify it as horror (in spite of a ton of gore and body trauma, and a conceit that understandably brings to mind things like 28 Days Later), as it’s really more a post-apocalyptic tale, but that’s a small issue. The overall book is fantastic.

The concept: Essentially a mix of Y: The Last Man and Crossed. Like the latter, there’s a disease that causes people to essentially devolved into primal torture/rape/killing machines. Like the former, it only affects men. More accurately, it affects people with high levels of testosterone. As the world breaks down into small feifdoms, though, so do medical facilities, and trans women relying on estrogen are, understandably, getting desperate.

Against this background, five years in, there’s also a huge TERF-run power in Maryland that’s trying to expand up to New England. Our protagonists — two trans women, one trans man who was post-top-surgery and thus off T when the disease hit, and a cis woman doctor — take refuge and jobs in a huge bunker run by a wealthy trust-funder. Of course, things fall apart both within the bunker and outside.

There’s a ton of very violent action here, but it’s the great characters — aside from the four leads, a self-loathing cis member of the militia also gets the spotlight — that really drive things here. In spite of the copious sex and violence, the relationships between the main characters is really at the core of a lot of this story, and (along with the focus on non-traditional heroes) what elevates it above just a good post-apocalyptic action novel.

I’ve been reading and watching horror for decades, so no amount of violence in a book puts me off, but if you’re bothered by it, I guess this might not be for you? There’s also a decent amount of sex, which may bother some folks. Note that also, while the author of the book is trans herself (and out, of course), there are a lot of scenes involving anti-trans slurs, and trauma around the lack of access to needed medical care, both of which might be issues for some people.

Oh, and of course, if you’re a TERF, you definitely won’t like this book, but bigots tend not to like books in which their evil is an explicit plot point.

"Manhunt" is the perfect story for horror lovers looking for a story that delivers the full spectrum of emotions. Felker-Martin's novel teams with feeling on every page of this dystopic splatterpunk fantasia.

Fran and Beth are two trans women struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic America where having too much testosterone can lead to certain doom. Just dealing with these new hormone-based realities would be hard enough, but this fallen USA is also teeming with threats: militarized TERFs, wealthy capitalists, and the still-present social structures of a conservative society all combine here to make a perfect storm.

"Manhunt" is the in-your-face storytelling that has been sorely missing in mainstream horror novels in recent years. Unapologetic, raw, and totally punk, this is a book that will rock you in all the best and worst ways. And for horror fans, that's exactly what the doctor ordered.

MANHUNT by Gretchen Felker-Martin is a big, bold, gleeful - and painful - scream of a novel.

The premise sets out to tango with all those "gender apocalypse" novels that either disregard or overwrite trans experiences, and puts gender identity front and centre. Its two central protagonists are Beth and Fran, two very different trans women who make a living killing feral, rabid cis men (or anyone with enough testosterone in their system to fall victim to the virus) and harvesting their balls to sell on the black market for oestrogen. From that description, you should be able to tell that there's so much nuance to the book: the experiences of trans men and women with PCOS are also addressed, for example, in this nasty and wide-ranging apocalypse that seems to have destroyed civilisation as we know it.

Or has it? One of Felker-Martin's strengths is the ability to use such a wild premise as a way to shed light on - and take side-swipes at - society as it is today. So Beth and Fran don't just have to worry about the feral men, but also gangs of TERFS, gatekeepers of a strictly chromosonal ("XX") view of womanhood, who are eradicating all those who don't make the cut. And some aspects of the post-apocalyptic world, too, are grimly recognisable, whether it's the fatphobia and racism of deranged bunker princess Sophie, or, on a darker and funnier note, two women cracking Gordon Ramsey jokes as they feed the pigs. And I particularly liked the author's brutal takedown of the 'stupid white women' who make up the bulk of the TERF army, 'who though pussy hats could overthrow the government... complacent narcissists.' The thesis of the novel, which shows up strongly in the final third, is what true sisterhood - or true allyship - might mean, rooted in community and vulnerability.

The book just RACES along at a breakneck speed - I read it in a couple of days - with barely a pause for breath between its bloody, brutal, violent action scenes. It's immensely readable, as Felker-Martin displays great craft and (dare I say it?) enjoyment in depicting the gory and filthy, with some truly read-through-your-fingers moments. But that's not all: I was also struck by how beautiful the prose was, even in everyday descriptions, or little moments in the mayhem when the world seemed to pause ('The leaves had changed. All pale yellow and warm orange and deep, bloody red. When had that happened?')

This gracefulness of touch extends, too, to the characterisation. Fran and Beth (and, later, trans man Robbie) are brilliantly realised characters, flawed and painfully, regrettably aware of their own weaknesses and vulnerabilities. To take just one example, the moment when Fran, after sex (and there's a lot of sex in this book - it's a very horny apocalypse, awash with hormones and humanity) goes back to bed alone, and wishes 'for a thousand stupid things that would never come back' was just breathtaking early characterisation. You really feel for all Felker-Martin's protagonists, even (or maybe especially?) the flawed and self-hating ones.

It's a nightmarish world, with plenty of straight-up (if such a term can be used for this incredibly queer book) horror imagery, a lot of it rooted in the early days of the apocalypse, in which those with lower T levels watched those with higher T levels turn into disfigured cannibal rapists (the moment when a protagonist wondered whether they'd be killed before being raped put me in mind of the famous depiction of the Reavers from the Firefly universe). The world is gracefully threaded through with just enough backstory to make me long for a prequel from the Felker-Martin universe, a Fear The Walking Dead to Manhunt's The Walking Dead.

There's so much I could say about this novel, and I know I'll be thinking about it for a long time - although I've read on NetGalley, I've rushed to place orders for physical copies, as I know I'll be pressing it into a lot of hands. A truly five-star read, and a powerful indication that the sort of horror the world is SCREAMING for is queer, trans, and transgressive.

Really a 3 1/2. I enjoyed it, the writing was spectacular. The only reason it isn’t a four star was due to it being a lot more graphic than I originally realized. This is great, but make sure you read up on the trigger warnings first.

HIGHLIGHTS
~if you have a virus that takes out all men…what happens to trans people???
~this book has something for everyone!
~discomfort. the something is discomfort. this book has something to make everyone uncomfortable.
~when it comes to the apocalypse and everything else TERFs = cockroaches
~do you like your testicles raw or fried?

adjective: sickening

1. causing or liable to cause a feeling of nausea or disgust.
2. amazing, great, perfect (slang)

This is very much a queer as in fuck you book.

And it’s fucking amazing.

Manhunt is as gloriously, defiantly provocative as the first brick at Stonewall, with just as much wrath and fierce pride and we have had ENOUGH behind it. This is a book that revels in its queerness and demands you look that queerness in the eye; not the carefully palatable, sexless, domesticated LGBTQ+-ness of a certain kind of cis white gay man or woman, but the raw messy uncensored queerness that makes so many people so very uncomfortable. Manhunt is equally graphic in gore and grime and fucking; threads of saliva joining two mouths; pus and blood; sweat and ugly crying; kink that isn’t dressed up nice and pretty for an audience but is sticky, clumsy, awkward, complicated, honest.

The monsters and the sex are described with exactly the same kind of uncompromising, meaty graphic detail, and I don’t for one second think that’s an accident. Not when the real world often has an easier time with horror-story monsters than the thought of trans sexuality, or fat people fucking, or the raw messiness of kink that’s not been polished up for a Hollywood screen. Felker-Martin brings the two – monsters, and trans people having sex – side-by-side, portrays them the same way to force you, the reader, to compare them. To acknowledge that they’re not the same, not for one fucking second, and if you’re feeling revulsion for both maybe think about why that is.

Are you uncomfortable yet?

<You always could have done something, he thought… You were just afraid to be uncomfortable.>

Manhunt is unequivocally anti-TERF, but it’s not satisfied with the progressive Left, either. The condemnation of open transphobia is only a little more intense than the contempt and fury directed at the kind of allies who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk, who use progressive, politically-correct language to dress up their discomfort and/or unwillingness to act on the behalf of trans people as Rational and Fair, when it couldn’t be less so – the kind of ‘allies’ who use that same language as a weapon against trans people when they most need help and support. Who don’t work to oppose and dismantle transphobia, and turn blind eyes when TERF bullshit then gets trans people hurt or killed.

There are multiple flavours of evil to choose from here; the mindless New Men, made honest monsters by the virus; the TERFs, out to kill every trans woman and ‘gender traitor’ they can find; and everyone who turns a blind eye, who is willing to trade principles for (perceived) safety, who compromises with TERFs rather than burning them out like the rot they are.

<That was what scared her. The women who stayed silent.>

The monsters and the TERFs and the hypocrites. Which are worse? The monsters aren’t in control of themselves…and the TERFs wouldn’t exist if the hypocrites didn’t let them.

Can you tell Manhunt left me with some pretty intense Feels?

<Not for the first time, Beth wondered if they were lonely, those things that had been men. If they missed their wives, their mothers, their daughters and girlfriends and dominatrixes. Or maybe they were happy now, free to rape and kill and eat whomever, free to shit and piss and jerk off in the street.

Maybe this world was the one they’d always wanted.>

I’m not going to talk to you about the plot; the book’s blurb covers that pretty well, and there are a lot of other reviews that go into detail on that. What I want to talk about is a central aspect of the premise that I couldn’t stop thinking about.

See, with this apocalyptic virus, anybody with too much testosterone – obviously mostly cis men, but plenty of cis women with various health issues too – transform into some of the most genuinely horrifying monsters I’ve ever seen.

<New men, she thought, gripping the gutter and bracing a foot against the wall. Like Coke Zero. Same great vicious disregard for our lives, none of the socially enforced restraint!>

This puts trans women, and many other nonbinary people, into a desperately terrifying situation; if they don’t get estrogen, the virus will get them, and in this post-apocalyptic society, you can’t exactly go get a prescription – or even buy pills or shots on the black market. There are some plants that can help – licorice root, for example – but mostly, the best supply of human estrogen comes from…testicles.

Yes, really. No, it’s not funny. It sounds like the kind of thing a little kid would giggle at – you know, the kind that’s still into toilet jokes – but it’s nauseating and terrifying and high-stakes from start to finish, and Felker-Martin never pretends otherwise. But that’s why ‘manhunter’ is a job title now – manhunters are people who go out to hunt and butcher New Men, risking a uniquely horrible death, in order to get testicles. Which you can then eat raw, preserve them in salt, pickle them, or, if you’re lucky enough to have the right kind of medical expert around to help you, have them rendered down into a (somewhat) more palatable form.

Here’s the thing I couldn’t wrap my mind around, though.

In the real world, there is no reason to be afraid, and therefore hate, trans women (or any other kind of nonbinary person). A trans woman is no kind of threat to anybody or anything, and anyone with working braincells can see that.

In Manhunt, though – in Manhunt, the fear isn’t completely unjustified. When a group kicks out their trans woman housemate, it’s because they’re fucking terrified she might turn into a monster. Which – she might. If something goes wrong, if she doesn’t get enough estrogen. One of the first things we learn from Beth and Fran is that every winter, when all they have are the supplies they’ve stored up throughout the rest of the year, they always start to experience the first symptoms of the virus. Every winter. They’ve survived so far, but. That’s pretty fucking frightening, for them, and for anyone who might be around them at the time.

This is a book that, in every possible way, is out to make you uncomfortable. But it is a whole different level of horror to have to sit with the awareness that – yeah. I’d be scared too, if my housemate, my friend, my neighbour might turn into a monster.

Reader, I did not enjoy that one bit. I didn’t, and don’t, want to be like those characters in the book who abandoned or forced out the people most at risk. And I believe that, despite being scared, I wouldn’t do what they did.

But I don’t know for sure. You never know for sure what you’d do when it’s life or death – or the risk of it – until you’re in that moment. So I believe. But I don’t know.

<Telling yourself what to feel is a brick wrapped up in silk: it looks pretty, but it hurts the same.>

Manhunt is all about making you look at all the aspects of transness – and the things we associate with it, like sex, because gods forbid we quit fetishizing trans people, or insisting they’re only faking so the men they really are can go be pervs in a woman’s bathroom – that make us uncomfortable, that we flinch away from, gloss over, don’t mention at the dinner table even if we’re supposedly capital-a Allies.

But that also means acknowledging that these things make us uncomfortable. In making us look so closely at the messy parts of transness, Felker-Martin is also making us look in the mirror. Why does x or y (hah) make us uncomfortable? What does that mean? Is it fair to feel that way? Is it prudish? Is it deeply buried prejudices we didn’t know we had?

I don’t know. But I’ll be thinking about it for a very long time.

To circle back to my previous point, though – Felker-Martin has created a set-up where it’s understandable and kind of fair to be scared of trans women. Which confused the hell out of me – justifying transphobia?! I don’t think Felker-Martin gives a fuck about precedent and messages and Art Must Be Moral, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. The TERFs and those willing to work with them are terrible people; I didn’t want to see their behaviour or actions as justified. I didn’t want to sympathise with their fear! (See above: this book making me fucking uncomfortable about myself and my sympathies.)

I wrestled with it for ages…but I think I might have worked it out. And if I’m right, it’s actually deceptively simple.

a) None of the fear and hate directed at trans women in Manhunt is really about the virus. It’s all shit that these people thought before – they’re just using the virus as an excuse to express their hate now.

b) Even if it is understandable to be afraid that a trans woman might get hit by the virus, and turn into a monster – there is a huge difference between a potential monster and a real, actual, right-now monster. And the people who act on their fear – and hate – by abandoning, abusing, hunting, and murdering trans women?

They’re not potential monsters. They’re right-now monsters. And it’s not a virus that’s done that to them – unless it’s the virus of hate they made and spread themselves.

We see over the course of the book several places, several communities, that are not afraid of trans women; that just work to make sure that they get the estrogen they need. And that’s it. Fear neutralised and un-justified. Voila. Trans women are only threatened by the virus when they’re cast out and alone; backed and supported, they’re no threat to anyone. And being backed and supported by their community is what they deserve, because every human deserves that.

Maybe that works as commentary for real-world transphobia too: things are only scary when they’re Othered. We see maybe-monsters (where there fucking aren’t any) and cast them out, and the distance we’ve created is what makes them frightening. And the cure for that is to invite them in and stand beside them – and fight the TERFs on the fucking beaches.

Community is when you never let go of each other. Not even after you’re gone.

Manhunt is in no way a preachy book – you don’t have to care about queer politics/ethics/whatever; you don’t have to read a deeper message into it if you don’t want to. This functions just as well – excellently – without any of that; as ‘just’ an intense, addictive horror novel, one as guaranteed to turn your stomach as it is to keep you turning pages. It’s queer as fuck, and it’s messy and complicated except for the parts that aren’t complicated at all; every single character is so damn human that it hurts, even the ones whose eyes you want to rip out and stomp on. Good gods, Felker-Martin knows what she’s doing: I’ve always called myself a wimp when it comes to horror, but it didn’t matter how disgusted or freaked I was, or how horrible the mental images she painted in my head were; I couldn’t stop reading (even when I actually tried). It just wasn’t possible to walk away from Beth, from Fran, from Robbie, from Indi, from the whole horrible situation they were in from the first page to the last.

And there’s this…wry, dark humour that threads its way through everything, so that sometimes in the midst of something that makes you want to scream or cry or throw up, you end up choking on a laugh instead.

<A real Pinterest board of a house,>

It feels legit, is the thing. They’re the kind of jokes survivors make, the gallows humour you laugh at because gods, you’ve been there – while everyone else in the room winces because you can’t say that! or how can you make fun of this?!, shock-horror-gasp. And yes, I winced too a few times, but…if you’ve gone through hell and come out the other side – or if you’re still in it – sometimes your sense of humour gets twisted, and you say things that are outrageous, but everyone who’s been there laugh as well. I don’t know how to put it any better than that.

The same note of oh, she gets it! rings true for Indi, a cis woman who is a doctor and fat and has terrible chronic pain. I don’t know if I have a favourite character, but I adored Indi, probably because she’s ridiculously smart and has to put up with idiots far too often in order to take care of her friends. One very simple line just shocked through me, as someone who lives with chronic pain myself;

<Indi pulled another smile out of the drawer.>

Yes. That. That’s exactly what it’s like.

With all the different characters… I loved how Felker-Martin makes it so clear that there is no trans monolith; that things are not the same for femmes and bricks, that no trans person is a ‘good queer’ (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean), that different trans people want different things – that different trans people are different, full stop. That being some flavour of queer does not make you an ally; that some of the worst transphobia comes from within the queer community. And that, gods, cis women are not sweet magical angels; the worst thing you can think of done by a man? A woman can do it too, can match evil for evil and viciousness for viciousness. Women aren’t intrinsically better. Matriarchy isn’t any better than a patriarchy, it just changes who’s on top.

<“What we’re doing to them…” Her voice was a ragged croak not much louder than a whisper. “It’s just the same shit men did to us before.”>

I said Manhunt isn’t preachy, and I meant it. Felker-Martin doesn’t lecture the reader. She just drops you into the middle of this post-apocalyptic nightmare and shows you how it could be so much worse than you ever imagined. It’s sickening and defiant and incisive as a bullet; it’s brutal and bitter and brilliant. There are monsters of all shapes and sizes; some are just more honest about it. It will rip your heart out and eat it. It will definitely keep you up at night. No matter what angle you’re coming at it from, there will be something to horrify you; the body-horror Felker-Martin revels in, or the psychological nightmare of it all, or literally everything about the TERFs – or maybe the fact that not for one second did this ever feel like a satire.

Are you feeling uncomfortable yet?

Manhunt is a queer-as-fuck horror novel that doesn’t play nice and pulls no punches; that is sickening in every sense of the word; that puts trans people front-and-center in a gender-divide apocalypse; that shows you a nightmare you can’t look away from and a mirror you’ll want to smash. It is, without question, one of the best books not just of the year, but the decade.

It comes out on Feb 22nd. Preorder it immediately – you don’t want to miss this one.

Manhunt is a brutal, unrelenting, and necessary story. It follows trans women in a post-apocalyptic dystopia where a virus has infected anyone with a certain level of testosterone, turning them into horrifying zombie-like beasts. TERFs become nazi-like in their regime to only keep "real women" in the world.

This book was so, so much and it hurt to read in a way that needs to hurt. It takes hard truths about a hard world and puts them in a wrecked, post-apocalypse setting. But at times, it was hard to convince myself this wasn't real, and that's just the point. The violence is raw and upsetting and it should be. It made me sit with my thoughts about the world for trans people and the hate and violence they face on a daily basis. It did what any good book should do, and it did it very well.

I would like to thank Netgalley, the Author and the publisher for allowing me to read this ARC. When the horror of a post-apocalyptic world and the horror of human bigotry meet, you get this gem, Manhunt. This was a freaking ride! I struggle with this review because I do not want to give anything away, but I’ll say this, besides the actual horror element, this book is a testament to what goes on in our world today with people who are thought of as “other.” I felt for the lead characters and hated that in a world where there is only survival, there is a group of idiots always having to not only attempt to rule but also fall back on old ass, played out prejudices. Like seriously, the world has gone to hell and you’re concentrating on whether XX is truly female versus a female born with the wrong parts? The flow of the book was lovely, I was immersed in each of the women’s inner dialogue. The horror element while in your face, was secondary to the horror that can be the human being. 5 Stars!

First, I want to strongly encourage readers to give this book a try. Trans-characters and their stories are absolutely vital to the growing inclusiveness of the publishing industry. Note: I'm going to end this review with trigger warnings for those interested.

Manhunt is an intense gory apocalyptical horror based in a world where anyone assigned male at birth is a threat. These humans are turning into ravenous beings, killing, raping, and mauling anyone who gets in their path. Beth and Fran are trying to survive this new reality. A militia of TERFS are out to rid the world of all men, and they include trans-women in this category, which means Beth and Fran are constantly on the run for their lives. Add Robbie to the mix (a man who was assigned female at birth), a spoiled bunker brat, a motherly doctor, several misguided romances, and tons of gruesome battles, and Manhunt takes readers down a dark and twisted narrative.

This book won't be for everyone. It's extremely heavy reading due to the sensitive topics, and the action never stops to give the reader a moment to catch a breath. It settles into a redundant rhythm that sometimes slows the pace despite the high-intensity. Beth and Fran are well-developed characters, but Robbie is a bit more guarded and it takes a beat to connect with him even though he is meant to be a main character. There's graphic sex scenes, and some seem necessary to the development of the characters while others don't. Overall, it will leave some readers salivating for more and others feeling a bit lackluster about the plot structure.

Here come the TW:
Rape
Gore/Disturbing Images

A spiritual successor to, and table turner of, Raccoona Sheldon’s “The Screwfly Solution” by way of Brian Keene’s The Rising, Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Manhunt is one of the freshest takes on the zombie apocalypse I’ve ever read. In large part, this is because trans and queer characters are not only central to the narrative, but essential to it. Manhunt is set in a world in which any human being with testosterone above a certain level becomes infected by a virus that transforms them into ravaging beasts. Trans women protagonists Beth and Fran hunt these dangerous new men along the New England coast, their very survival dependent on harvesting glands from the mutated corpses of new men. Soon they encounter Robbie, a trans man handy with a gun and distrusting of strangers. As this trio navigates this world gone strange, they encounter other survivors including a socialite “bunker brat” with the most utopian survival shelter money could buy and a band of militant TERFs bent on total control of the new world. Felker-Martin excels at creating memorable characters, crafting heart-pounding action scenes, and building larger-than-life set pieces while maintaining pathos and reinforcing a theme of found family. The pacing is excellent, the world feels real, and the jokes always land (the barbs directed at a certain Scottish author were devastatingly funny). While some cishet readers may be squicked out by frank and explicit depictions of trans sexuality, Felker-Martin’s ability to shift terms according to her POV characters’ preferences and identities is impressive. Manhunt is, at turns, hilarious, grotesque, intense, brutal, and heartfelt. An easy recommendation.

“Manhunt” by Gretchen Felker-Martin is a gritty, ferocious, and bloodthirsty novel that will stun, horrify, and unsettle its readers. Though this is a horror story set in the aftermath of a devastating virus, readers should prepare themselves for the bold statement this book unflinchingly delivers.

Set in an apocalyptic world where anyone with high levels of testosterone turn feral, people are trying to survive and adjust to this new world. Those of high privilege (mainly radical feminists) have created an army with the sole purpose of trying to purge the cities of anyone who doesn’t fit in with their perception of what a “woman” is. Not only must the main characters navigate, survive, and avoid the creatures that now haunt their world, they must fight against turning feral themselves and against the people who seek to destroy them.

“Manhunt” is a powerful blend of horror, dystopian-apocalyptic fiction, and LGBTQ+ awareness that will spark a much-needed conversation about the way transgender people are perceived, treated, and understood politically and socially. Reading this novel opens up readers to an intimate and personal view about what it means to fight for one’s identity and right to exist in a world that tends to dehumanize and judge what it doesn’t understand.

In this fast-paced novel, where readers are immediately pulled into a bloody and unforgiving battlefield, comes a slew of morally grey characters with traumatic backstories that continues to haunt them in the present. The diverse cast emphasizes how the virus impacts everyone. Rather than trying to overcome this wrench in their new reality together, it creates friction and deindividualizes many people. What ensues is a gruesome, messed-up society where no one is truly safe or free to be themselves.

Personally, this novel isn’t for me. Even though the end absolutely gutted me, I didn't feel any connection to the characters. The background information that is given only assisted the justification behind the characters’ actions and behaviour in the story, but didn’t bridge the gap between the characters and reader to form an intimate bond. For that to happen, there would have to be a deeper glimpse into the characters' pasts that would help them to stand on their own, separate from the plot. There were also a lot of graphic sex scenes that I wasn’t expecting and in general, I found it hard to become fully immersed in the story. If readers find this story to be interesting or want to give it a try, do not hesitate to pick it up. While this story is not for me, it may be the perfect story for other readers.

“Manhunt” will have readers thinking about which side of the battlefield they would be on if this were their new reality, and it will have them questioning their understanding of how those who identify as LGBTQ+ exist in the world and the battles they must face. This is an important story for those within and outside of the transgender community that will spark a much-needed conversation.

“Manhunt” by Gretchen Felker-Martin is expected to be published on February 22nd, 2022. Save the date and keep a lookout for when the book hits the shelves because this is one raw, hellfire of a story that should not be missed.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge (Tor Nightfire) for providing me with a free e-arc of this story and the opportunity to share my honest opinion in this review.

Wow! This is a dark, violent, twisty read. Part horror, part suspense, part gender-commentary, I was kept on my toes for the entire book.

Don’t sleep on this spectacular novel. Gretchen doesn’t waste the story with unnecessary filler or extraneous descriptions. Every scene, character dynamic, and dialogue matters. The worldbuilding offers enough to paint a complete portrait of this future. The characters, so dimensional and complicated and memorable, feel like real people with their desires and contradictions.

She explores the motivations and objectives of the Maryland Womyn’s Legion, including castrating male children and turning them into eunuchs called maenads. Ramona, a member of the Legion, struggles between her loyalty to the cause and her secret love for Feather, a nonbinary person. Most importantly, Gretchen doesn’t hold back on discussions of gender and sexual violence. However, the conversation surrounding gender and violence in Manhunt avoids preachy territory.

Read the rest of the review here: https://thegeekiary.com/manhunt-by-gretchen-felker-martin-book-review/104459

I really wanted to like this book. It has such a strong premise and is much needed in the representation of queer horror. I found the stream of consciousness writing a bit too hard to enjoy. And I often found the dialogue very forced. The book is gory and does not hold back. I think the book will appear to horror fans but may be too niche for every reader.

Manhunt is over the top! The scenarios/characters and their behaviors are unrealistic but, if you take it from the trans experience as a whole I can understand some of the views. . The violence on trans women is extremely high, disheartening and sad. I also want to say this book holds a lot of transphobia which can be triggering for some. The characters are in pain and it was hard for me to read about it. I appreciate where the author was going and trying to say in this book. I feel that being a heterosexual women reading this helped open my eyes to a lot of the trauma that trans women have and I think that this is an extremely beneficial novel for them. It was well done!

I thought this was going to be so much better, but it's kind of flat and unexpressive. I wish the author had stuck to her baroque, gothic filth of her previous titles. This was stylistically flat. But, I did enjoy the premise and how TERFs were the enemy. I hope she keeps writing.

DNF at 20%.

This book was just not for me. I’m new to horror, so, I’m trying new books I wouldn’t usually try. This was incredibly gory and violent and just not for me.

Manhunt was my introduction to gender-based apocalyptic fiction, and oh my god, what an introduction. This book is a messy, unflinching, and raw take on a het- and cis-focussed genre and has blown any and every expectation out of the water.

Gretchen Felker-Martin is an incredible author who pulls no punches, and she really knows where to hit you where you hurt when it comes to creating characters that are real and flawed, that are desperate for and afraid of human connection in equal measure. Fran and Beth, the leads of this story, are two such characters, but Felker-Martin excels at drawing you into the intricacies of the lives of everyone involved. There is no such thing as a two-dimensional space filler in Manhunt - every character is fully realised, and you're exposed to their deepest, darkest secrets in a way that is both incredibly confronting and masterfully done.

I must say this: if you're looking for a fun romp through a post-apocalyptic landscape, Manhunt is... probably not it. This book is full-on, gory and erotic and devastating and terrifying. There were times I had to put it down and walk away because I felt physically ill; more than one occasion where I said holy shit out loud to an empty room. For some people, I think this book will be deeply triggering - there is rape, sexual assault, and forced pregnancy, to name a few, and the rhetoric and actions of the TERFs are laid out in black and white (and are, unsurprisingly, completely ghastly). Other people might find it healing. Just know going in that when I say it's full-on, I mean it is full-fucking-on.

Manhunt is unflinching and gritty, and I would recommend it for anyone who is looking for post- and apocalyptic fiction that does not hesitate to pull out the gory innards of the genre and present it to you on a platter. Reading this book is not just reading this book, it's a full-blown sensory, emotional, and human experience, and not one you're ever going to forget.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Macmillan - Tor/Forge for a copy of this ARC.

Manhunt is a much more difficult read than I had anticipated. From its shocking moments of violence, raw descriptions of sex, and villainous TERF characters, there's a lot that will leave you seething in anger.

These were all aspects of what made this such a tough read for me. Finding a character that didn't straddle the line between good and bad was a challenge. This led to problems in finding someone to connect with. It wasn't hard to detest the villains of the story, but the "heroes" pushed the boundaries as well.

While there are some well done relationships built, they're crafted on unstable foundations that threaten to crumble at even small inconveniences.

It's not a terrible thing to read a book where the immediate reaction is anger or frustration; this isn't an easy tale. The style was a bit of a problem though. Chapters follow multiple characters broken down into paragraph sized chunks. You rarely get to sit with any one character for very long, and I found it harder to focus on the big picture.

This is a novel where you need a deep breath to begin and a pallette cleanser novel afterwards. Reactions will vary wildly and discussion will certainly be spirited after.