Absolutely magnificent and one of the most expressive things I've read in my life. I've read it several times, and have thought about it every day for nearly a year. Even now, if I pick it up to check something in it, I often find myself continuing to read from there.
It's extremely character- and theme-driven, and rich in both respects. The characters I adore, to an extent even the villains, and I missed them when the story came to a close. Even the setting feels like a character unto itself. Thematically, it's like looking at the real world in a funhouse mirror that magnifies things we don't see or don't want to see, and very real pain, fears, and experiences. It's almost totally non-fantastical as the zombie-plague and gender-plague subgenres go: it has its one big diversion from the real world, the t. rex virus, and that's it. The rest is just what do you mean this isn't real life, to the point that a great deal of what's in it has direct real-world inspiration. It uses the tools of the horror genre not in service of the genre itself, but as means of expression.
As far as being horror goes, it does a lot of interesting things with it. The t. rex virus is a powerful metaphor that does a great deal of heavy lifting in expression of the story's themes, and it actually sells its fate-worse-than-death for what it is, though I may be biased. It evokes dread not only in the sense of fear of death, but of fear of what you will live through. And oh can it evoke fear of death. Even in those occasions where the perspective character is a villain that you'd think you shouldn't empathize with, it makes you feel their fear.
I do feel a need to note that the premise of the book is not killing cis women, as some comments have claimed. That's bull. The premise is the protagonists trying to survive in a world that doesn't want them in it. It does feature truly extreme violence that I might compare to DOOM or Mortal Kombat, but that violence is directed at everyone in it, and it has no interest in glorifying violence against cis women as a demographic nor against noncombatants. Even in its portrayal of TERF villains, it gives them a fairer shake and is more humanizing than it was obligated to be.
It does make a serious break with a certain orthodoxy in feminist literature, however: it does not portray a world ostensibly run by women as necessarily being a utopia or even with women coming together in unity. It instead portrays a world where the worst women in it seized control in the power vacuum after T-day, and that to a large extent has the same old violent and exploitative hierarchies, just under new management. Some consider portraying women behaving as badly as men to be offensive or even somehow misogynistic. I don't. It's actually very interesting.
so yeah read this book it rules
Your audiobook is waiting!
Enjoy a free trial on us
- Click above for unlimited listening to select audiobooks, Audible Originals, and podcasts.
- One credit a month to pick any title from our entire premium selection — yours to keep (you'll use your first credit now).
- You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
- $14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel online anytime.
Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company
Manhunt
Audible Audiobook
– Unabridged
Read & Listen
Switch back and forth between reading the Kindle book and listening to Audible audiobook.Add the audiobook for a reduced price of $7.49 after you get the Kindle book as part of your Kindle Unlimited subscription.
People who viewed this also viewed
Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
People who bought this also bought
Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
Related to this topic
Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
- Audible Audiobook
Reviews with images
Manhunt is horror at every turn, with the gas pedal stuck to the floor, and steering wheel detached
This book just never lets up. Knives, arrows, and bullets. Trans main characters getting chased by feral beast-men and murderous, genocidal TERFs. Queer love and lust described in liquid detail. Sweat, spit, blood, vomit, and tears. Hope and despair framed by memories both good and heartbreaking from the time before the end of the world.Manhunt demands you revel in its filth, DO NOT LOOK AWAY. Feel the cuts and bites, the senseless loss of friends to greed and baseless bigotry. Chew and taste of the rancid flesh orbs that keep the deadly virus at bay. Hear the shrieks of the packs of men as they roam the woods at night, hunting for any meat they can sink their claws and teeth into. Smell the aroma of survivalist lovers embracing each other anyplace, any hideaway, they feel even slightly safe in, and snort in the unbearable stink of the rotting victims, and the bloody boots of the fascist TERFs, whose deranged anti-trans cult beliefs won't even let something like the apocalypse stop them from trying to eliminate trans people from the world. See the gore splattering into your vision, dripping from your page-mind and onto your face, glance at the putrid skin of the beast-men out of the corner of your eye as they chase you, peer into the mind of the cultist as she decides whether to screw you or end you.Manhunt sets a high bar for how gender-based apocalypse stories should be done from now on. I recommend you buy it, read it twice, then loan it out to a friend before you get addicted and have to read it a third time.
Top reviews from other countries
danny
Honest. Compelling. Funny. Beautiful.
Reviewed in Canada on November 21, 2022
Kyra Wunnicke
Great representation of a trans life.
Reviewed in Germany on June 15, 2022