It’s about what it feels like to stand in front of the mirror as a newly out trans woman, convinced down to your marrow that you’ll never pass, that no one could ever love you, and the hideous moment when those feelings start to poison your perceptions of others like you. “It’s about the visceral fear of returning to manhood, which I left at the age of 25. “MANHUNT is a story about the worst things I’ve ever thought about myself boiling over into reality,” Felker-Martin says in a statement from the book’s publisher, Tor Nightfire.

MANHUNT, then, isn’t so much a novel as a primal howl of rage and loneliness, shot through with glimmers of humor and hope.

Beth and Fran eventually meet up with a gun-toting trans man named Robbie, and the three of them band together to contend with savage cis men, a murderous cult of TERFs, and the constant ordeal of being trans people in a world that’s almost universally out to kill them. (The virus preys on any human with sufficient testosterone levels.) Dangerous as men are, though, the most immediate threat to Beth and Fran’s survival usually comes in the form of heavily armed, militant TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists), a group of violently transphobic cis-gendered women who hunt down and execute trans women. Set in a terrifying, all-too-recognizable America ravaged by a virus that turns men into feral, murderous monstrosities, Felker-Martin’s novel centers on two trans women, Beth and Fran, who keep the disease at bay by hunting infected men and harvesting their reproductive organs for estrogen. You’d be forgiven for wondering if they’re talking about different books, but MANHUNT is all those things and more. Nemesis trilogy author April Daniels called it “ pitiless, nerve-shredding descent into Hell,” while Library Journal described it as “sensual, tender, honest, and inspirational.” Cassandra Khaw ( Nothing but Blackened Teeth) says MANHUNT is “a barbed hook that will dig deep and split you open,” while Detransition, Baby author Torrey Peters is here to assure you it’s “fun as hell.” What’s even more impressive than MANHUNT’s list of supporters, though, is the range of responses the book provokes. MANHUNT isn’t due out until February 22, but it’s already entered a second printing. Genre luminaries such as Carmen Maria Machado and Brian Keene have sung its praises, along with mainstream outlets including Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. If you’re even a casual traveler in the realm of contemporary horror fiction, there’s a good chance you’ve heard the buzz surrounding author Gretchen Felker-Martin’s debut novel, MANHUNT.

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Manhunt gretchen felker martin