Manhunt

Gretchen Felker-Martin wrote Manhunt as a deliberately confrontational post-apocalyptic novel. The setup is that a pandemic has turned anyone with too much testosterone into a feral, violent creature. The survivors are a mix of cis women and trans women, and the book follows several of them trying to stay alive in a New England that has fallen apart.

It’s a violent book. Felker-Martin doesn’t pull punches, and a few scenes are written specifically to make the reader uncomfortable.

The politics are intentional. The book is, among other things, an argument with the way trans women are treated in TERF discourse, and the antagonists include groups that mirror that worldview.

Readers who liked The Last of Us or Carmen Maria Machado will find some of the same DNA here, though Felker-Martin’s voice is louder and angrier than either.