This was an okay read, I feel like it could be better, I didn't care what was happening to any of the characters.

This was a very middle-of-the-road book for me. But I do know people I can recommend this book to that will love and enjoy it.

Alan Heathcock’s novel 40 is a novel with a huge, sweeping story. The novel starts with Mazzy, an American soldier who wakes up in a bomb crater with wings on her back. She is seen as an angel and becomes a symbol of the movement to Novae Terrae, a religious extremist group who is also working to destroy the government and become the New America. Mazzy gets deep into their organization for one simple reason, they have kidnapped her sister and she wants her back. 40 is filled with climate disaster and a dystopian setting which reminds me a great deal of many of Margaret Atwood’s novels, particularly The Heart Goes Last. Heathcock brings his own spin to this subgenre and it is definitely a great addition.

There are so many elements of 40 that I can focus on and explore. The biblical plot. The dystopian world. The fight between the government and the people. The way that Mazzy as a soldier reacts differently to scenarios because she has a history as a soldier. The way that sometimes Mazzy has to be trusting of whatever people are telling her because she has no other choice, even if the people that surround her have their own agendas and are not the most trustworthy individuals. There are so many different angles that can be discussed and explored. One of the most interesting things to me is not one of the main themes but part of the setup of Novae Terrae against the government. There are not many pages strictly dedicate to this, but it is the major motivation of the entire movement. When Jo Sam and the Novae were cutting off food supplies, using drones to fight the military, and eventually being too clever for the military. These moments make me think about how someone with a little bit of strategy and a great deal of support like Jo Sam can crumble an already weakened structure. This America is not built like the current America. This America has been ravaged by plagues, floods, earthquakes, and other climate change disasters that help the Novae Terrae take advantage. They step in and offer a utopian escape for many who have lost everything already. By being the problem for the government and then being the solution for the citizens, this group has been able to get an upper hand on the entire situation.

I enjoyed 40 and Alan Heathcock’s writing. This novel is fast paced and magnificent, and it can be in a class with all of the other great dystopian novels. It is much different than his story collection Volt, but it is a direction that I am ready to take with him.

I received this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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This is a beautifully written novel. The prose was almost poetic at times. It effectively poses several philosophical questions in a relatively short novel but I also felt a deep emotional connection to the story itself and the main character. What struck me most was the power of love and the lengths we will go to or what we sacrifice for it. There were so many passages I found myself rereading or highlighting. I feel like this is the kind of story you could reread and continue to find new things to think about.

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advanced reader copy.

This week’s headline? “Wings on a woman does not make her a bird.”

Why this book? That cover though. And cults.

Which book format? ARC

Primary reading environment? In a state of delirium on the train.

Any preconceived notions? I’ll probably like it.

Identify most with? Mazzy? Maybe? I’m finding it difficult to connect with characters lately. (I don’t think it’s the author’s fault. I’m just very analytical and overthink this question. 😂)

Three little words? “cold indifferent stars”

Goes well with? Breakfast food, fresh produce

Recommend this to? People who live for hypothetical worlds.

Other cultural accompaniments: https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impacts-of-food

Grade: 4/5

I leave you with this: “Grief was a demon of possession. When people talked of time healing wounds, they only meant that overtime you become accustomed to that demon inside you, and what at first felt like an invasive presence, alien and nefarious, slowly became integrated into your being, the imp of sorrow crouched within you for the remainder of your days.”

📚📚📚

In a post-apocalyptic future where a cult has taken over Los Angeles, Mazzy Goodwin is looking for her younger sister, Ava Lynn. One day she wakes up in a bomb crater with a pair of wings, not knowing how they got there. She then becomes this figurehead for a revolution.

Beyond the main storyline, 40 is here to ask the big questions about religion and politics amongst ones of self-reflection. The writing is raw and honest, visceral even. I wasn’t expecting to like this as much as I did due to it starting off somewhat disjointed but on further reflection it made sense with Mazzy’s journey to find her sister.

40 is available now.

tw: violence

Published by Farar, Straus and Giroux/MCD on August 2, 2022

A beginning and ending of moderate interest sandwich a dull middle that offers almost nothing of interest. But for the protagonist’s wings, 40 begins like a standard dystopian tale. Mazzy Goodwin views her job as protecting her little sister, but she’s awful at that job. In her regular Army gig, Mazzy is also protecting West Texas from the Novae Terra, a religious cult that became a movement that birthed an insurrection. The cult’s leader is Jo Sam, who might or might not be a space alien. The Novae Terra gives a boatload of cash and a lifetime income to its initiates, provided they wear a white-sleeved uniform and carry an assault rifle. The Novae Terra have created an elite military force known as the Pearl.

A shockingly incompetent government can’t seem to identify the source of Novae Terra’s wealth, but it sees the results. Novae Terra has acquired much of the country’s farmland and has poisoned the rest of it, giving itself control over the nation’s food supply. Novae Terra has promised to create a world that is free of suffering, but only initiates benefit from that pledge. Jo Sam knows that most people will sell their soul to avoid even a day of hunger. Novae Terra distributes food from rural churches while its drones bomb cities. The government seems powerless to do anything about it.

Jo Sam trades on the reality that weak-minded people will believe any stupid conspiracy theory if it appears on multiple websites and feeds into their underlying anger. Claims that the government is trying to starve American citizens to enslave and control them and that the president eats babies (sound familiar?) have contributed to anti-government sentiment.

Jo Sam appears to be a drunk who likes to sing American Pie, making him an unlikely leader, but perhaps he attracts a following by being an ordinary guy. Or perhaps his followers are love with their conspiracy theories and don’t care who leads them. Or perhaps the drunk is a front for the true Jo Sam.

Against this background, Mazzy’s home has been attacked. Her sister Ava Lynn has been taken by Nova Terra. An actor named Raja Garbos has defected from Novae Terra. Garbos offers to use his Nova Terra contacts to help Mazzy recover Ava Lynn. The story trudges on from there.

Most of the middle involves Mazzy’s attempt to recover Ava Lynn, which may or may not be part of a larger plan that Mazzy may or may not understand. Nova Terra promises to return Ava Lynn if she plays the role of Seraphine, the Angel of 40. The “40” refers to the Nation of 40, formerly New Los Angeles, a nation controlled by Jo Sam and Novae Terra.

Mazzy’s role in the novel is to fret about all the awful things she’s seen until she flies to a different location so she can fret some more. She is “haunted by what might have been.” What if she had studied harder or if her mother had money or if she’d watched out for her sister? All prompting me to ask, What if you stopped fretting and did something useful, or at least interesting? Most of the time, Mazzy is either showing off or hiding her wings.

Oh right, the wings. A half-baked explanation for the wings that tries to sound sciencey appears near the novel’s end, but it’s a crock. It’s better to view this as a fantasy with a winged protagonist whose magic wings represent angelic purity of heart. Or something.

Alan Heathcock’s prose strives to be poetic and while it often achieves that goal, the style is too often a distracting substitute for actual storytelling. It’s fine to aim for literary prose, but Heathcock tries too hard, sometimes delivering pretension rather than beauty. “The silo’s amoebic light ever shifting, the tree’s golden leaves winking, and the odd birds ceaselessly singing, I became disoriented, not just feeling that the place was manufactured, but that the same could be said of my childhood home and maybe even for me.” This sounds like a description of someone tripping on acid, but it’s just Mazzy laying on her couch doing nothing.

Mazzy spends a lot of time doing nothing, other than feeling sorry for herself or pontificating about grief or her crisis of faith or the unfairness of human existence. Heathcock balances Mazzy’s dystopian angst with Mazzy’s little sister’s uncanny wisdom and strength because stories like this always have a little kid who sounds like an Ivy League divinity professor. I didn’t believe a moment of this story (at least after the wings appear), nor was I drawn sufficiently into the story to generate a willing suspension of disbelief.

NOT RECOMMENDED

A futuristic America has been plagued with civil unrest, a pandemic, and natural disasters. Out of all this chaos a government faction rises from the ashes, the Novae Terrae. This faction emerges because the people’s desperation for survival and hope. Mazzy is a solider who is in search of her sister and answers to what has happened to her. She awakens one day and finds that has wings. She doesn’t understand why or how this happened. The Novae Terrae uses Mazzy has a propaganda tool to boost their cause, with promises that they will help her find her sister. Mazzy has to find a way to survive this situation. A fascinating dystopian story about faith and the people who are willing to do anything to exploit it.

Disclaimer: Thank you to NetGalley and MCD for this review copy, I received this review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Real Rating: 4.5* of five, rounded up for trenchance

Regulars to this blog will recognize the name Alan Heathcock from my warbling my fool lungs out about his collection, <I>Volt: Stories</i>. One big reason for that is that Author Heathcock does not mess around when he makes his imagery work your brain:
<blockquote>"...I knew it'd come to this, you say. I knew I was right. The power of knowing the despair you ordered has finally come to pass makes you feel like a god. Let's be honest. It's what you want. You want this world to collapse. Want people to be every awful thing."

–and–

Grief was a demon of possession. When people talked of time healing wounds, they only meant that over time you become accustomed to that demon inside you, and what at first felt like an invasive presence, alien and nefarious, slowly became integrated into your being, the imp of sorrow crouched within you for the remainder of your days.</blockquote>
I don't know how much clearer the man can be than that. I can feel these words, see the world through their gravity lens, perceive the distorted light that comes from every other direction than the original one to form the ghost of the initial thought behind them.

Which is why I, devout atheist and committed anti-religion crusader, read a whole novel about a post-apocalyptic world run by and for evangelical evil-doers with hearts colder than emptiest space. Which is why I'm here telling you to go and get one of these books, these beautifully designed books (that jacket design!), or to pre-order the Kindle version so you'll open the device tomorrow morning and join Mazzy and Ava Lynn in the hellscape that Jo Sam the evangelist of doom designed and brought forth.

Betrayal is only the beginning of Mazzy's journey. It's certainly true that she's not a trusting, sunny-hearted soul for a single second of her life. Her sister Ava Lynn calls out the only tenderness she allows herself to externalize. The child, whose fate is not ever easy, confounds Mazzy in her extremely self-possessed certainty. Mazzy being incapable of a single sustained good mood for more than the absolute minimum of time, she envies Ava Lynn and vows to protect her. Which, this being a novel, means that Mazzy is unable to do so.

The amount of manipulative chicanery Mazzy experiences after she (unexpectedly and without external stimulus) becomes winged is, of course, the bulk of the novel's action. Her bewingèd state makes her very valuable to the evildoers around Jo Sam the evangelist, unsurprisingly, and so they use Ava Lynn to extort obedience out of Mazzy. The sheer outrage I experienced over this...! It's an effective tool, of course, the safety of one's child (dead mother) being hard coded into our protective circle by evolution. That it is never a violent threat, "we will hurt her," made me able to continue to read the story. They keep Mazzy from being with Ava Lynn to keep her working for their vile controlling cause.

The day dawns, of course, when Mazzy is no longer suitable for their use; a series of things occurs that, in several moments, made me think I was being played by Author Heathcock. It's a pleasure to report that he played fair...but the ending of the story is still a major surprise. Yes, I saw the twist coming, but I think that's to be expected. A truly successful twist, in this case, means the expected event occurs but something you-the-reader would've dismissed as improbable happens after. Job done, Author Heathcock.

I'll say that, after reading many, many chosen-one narratives and even more post-apocalyptic religion-used-for-evil tales over the past seven decades, I'm not sorry I read this one. I think it's well-made and well-written, I suspect it's something the author has allowed to simmer for a very long time before committing to words for others to read, and I'm pleased with the results he has achieved.

This book will hook and hold you from the very beginning. Mazzy is a character that we can identify with and struggle with. Her story will have you asking all the hard questions of yourself. The story is beautifully written. Don't miss this one.

Opens with an immediate scene of visceral significance and rapid succession of things occurring, fire, bombshell, blood and war.
This will be a first person narrative with main protagonist Mazzy Goodwin, it’s all in here, love and hope, war and peace, righteous and unrighteous, belief and unbelief, truth and deception, these aspects of humanity a fete to tackle but he does well in communicating them with the main protagonist in her metamorphosis hand in hand reader and Mazzy on a journey through many aspects ones we fight for and ruminate in our souls.

The author has you reading on succumbed into this strange world in his grasp, there is no swaying from the tales immersion, no unnecessary sentences in this inner and outer conflict and the search for answers and safety in all the world gone topsy turvy.

There is the bond and love for a sister in this tale, Mazzy is in search for her sister at all costs and sacrifice.
There is a personal and world struggle for the Mazzy with war and belief and trying to understand who leads what and the policies people follow. She is a spirited soul full of grit and courage but also naive and swayed by others, actors on the stage with lies and deception, all calling to different ways, light and darkness, she is caught in the web of wars and policy and religious conflict big questions being tackled in this moral tale that has the reader try to maybe answer the questions and doesn’t give one answer but let’s all play in this stage of life on a chessboard of decision making and fates, good or bad.

Aspects of religion and politics, the ways denizens of this earth follow others and chosen ones, with the moral and ethic questioning of a Flannery O'Connor, in this apocalyptic tale the author is shining a light with peoples role in an alternate American future with a powerful force of love driving through novel amidst all the darkness.

40 by alan heathcock is a hell of a ride. written in short scenes that feel urgent and perilous, we're immediately tossed into the action. mazzy is a private in the american armed forces. after a serious of explosions, mazzy wakes up in a large crater, wings sprouted from her back. from here things only get worse for her. famine, environmental catastrophe, and civil unrest make america a dangerous place, and a group of para-military "Pearls" clad in white rise to take control of the states. mazzy is thrust into the world of the "Pearls" and told if she ever wants to see her sister again, she needs to be pretend to be an angel sent from heaven to sanctify the "Pearls" mission. as you can imagine, things get pretty grim.

this is a novel of big, big questions. god, country, and self are all on the line here, and heathcock doesn't shy away from the pain that the questions can inflict. and when mazzy does try to shy away, we see the debilitating effects of following a plan without knowing why, and for who you fight.

the novel's biggest downfall is mazzy's agency and character development. she doesn't really have any. at all. the entire novel is inflicted upon her (which plays into many of those big questions!) but it's hard to read an entire book where the protagonist doesn't do anything of her own volition. there will undoubtedly be some comparisons to katniss in the hunger games, and i think this is their biggest difference. katniss's entire journey starts off from a decision she makes, and she compounds on those decisions, whereas mazzy is used from the very beginning.

but! despite that seemingly big flaw, i thoroughly enjoyed this. the cover is to die for, and i enjoyed heathcock's writing a lot. the characters were interesting as they played politics and worked hard to survive in a world that wished to snuff them out.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This writing style just didn't work for me. I think it was meant to be very raw and visceral but was too staccato for my personal tastes. Interesting dystopian concept though.

What a strange book. Had to DNF at 35%. Just wasn't in the mood for this type of fantasy that was dark and too close to home in some aspects. Will be trying this again come spooky season!

40 was a baffling read. I had first been drawn in by the cover of the novel. A classical rendition of an angel proudly holding a trumpet aloft, but instead of the expected soft golds or blues, is entirely blood red, whilst walking through a hot pink 40. After being curious about what sort of novel could have such an eye-catching cover, I looked at the plot blurb. The setting is in a post-apocalyptic world, the enemy a powerhouse of a cult that has taken over the city of Los Angeles. A girl who becomes the figurehead of a revolution, just to get her sister back. The same girl who had awoken in a bomb crater with mysterious wings on her back! All of it sounded fascinating! Just like the type of book I would love to dive into! I was sorely disappointed. I almost put this book on the DNF list by the second chapter; I only made it to the end because I wanted to know what would happen with the sister. 40 feels contrived. Events happen within the plot just to add some drama. Sections of the story read oddly, and the plot jumped from place to place. The writing style itself was also painful at points. It felt more like a rough draft than a finished story. The characters themselves felt artificial. Like strawmen simply placed so the protagonist can have something to interact with. The main character herself, Mazzy, felt hollow. She didn't feel like much of a character. (I agree with someone else who said she felt a LOT like a Katniss rip-off. Not saying that was intentional, but the similarities were glaring.) There were speeches in certain scenes that felt as if they were meant to be read as a "deep, introspective message to the masses" but they came off as shallow. I would also like to note that the "twist" was painfully obvious. I knew what was coming the second that character was introduced. The ending of the novel also felt insanely bizarre. I believe I understand what it was supposed to be referencing when it comes to Bible stories, but it felt insane and out of place. Simply put, I did not like 40. After finishing the novel, I was struck with the memory of this scene from "Burn After Reading". It sums up how I felt finishing this novel.

"What did we learn Palmer?" "
"I don't know sir."
"I don't know either. I guess we learned not to do it again. I'll be f*cked if I know what we did though."

Heathcock's 40 is a book that is both biblically apocalyptic and dystopic in scope and breadth.

Mazzy is a solider who awakens in a bomb crater, stunned and unsteady, to find she has suddenly sprouted wings. Uncertain if she's been blessed by a miracle or the victim of experimentation, she's now on a mission to locate the people who killed her mother and kidnapped her little sister, Ava Lynn. The people of New Los Angeles, however, decide she's an angel and the leaders of the Revolution quickly escalate her to a status symbol on the WRONG side of the war. Mazzy must carefully navigate relationships, new and old, if she stands any chance of surviving, let alone being reunited with Ava.

This politically charged futuristic look at the destruction of mankind is wholly unlike Heathcock's previous work. It's breathtaking and beautiful. This is a side of him I wasn't aware existed!

This novel was not for me. This is the first novel from MCD that I haven't absolutely loved. Aside from the writing feeling a little overwrought to me, the story seems derivative. No doubt many others will disagree.

At first, I had a good number of criticisms about this story, but as I kept reading, they slowly started feeling trivial. The ending was so unexpected and breathtaking that, by the time I reached it, I barely had a single bone to pick with Alan Heathcock.

Maybe the factions are too confusing at the beginning, and maybe Mazzy, our protagonist, is lacking in character depth. So what? I can forgive both of those things since the plot and the writing are both solid.

Are you hungry? Are you warm? Do you know that I love you?

This really exceeded my expectations. A political dystopian tale that is frighteningly believable, with a compelling and nuanced protagonist. The whole time reading this, it felt like a story I already knew in my heart, and I often thought to myself, “this is a story I would write, if I could.”

It was great. I have no complaints or criticisms. I wouldn’t want anything changed. A wonderful little gift of literature.

*thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC!*