cover image The Raft

The Raft

Fred Strydom. Skyhorse/Talos, $25.99 (400p) ISBN 978-1-940456-60-7

Strydom’s debut subverts postapocalyptic fiction with a scathing parable of pain and paranoia. Readers will slowly piece together the origin of an apocalyptic upheaval by experiencing it through equally confounded characters. Humans inexplicably lose their memories on Day Zero and awaken to enslavement in isolated communities controlled by the Orwellian Renascence. Kayle Jenner escapes and searches for his son, Andy. In a wasteland of violence, as he struggles to recover his memory and family, he stumbles upon a revelation with shattering implications. Strydom reinvigorates the genre with a suspenseful concept and intimately realized characters. Shrouding the origins of the catastrophe in lost memories, this sucker punch of a novel exchanges the traditional Sturm und Drang of apocalypse theatrics for internal action that’s even more shocking and seductive, leaving readers with a great deal to think about. (May)