Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Tor Trade, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250794642

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook ( Bookshop.org  | Amazon.com )

Unless you are hardcore into extreme horror, you need an iron stomach for this one.

Manhunt is a response to gender apocalypse stories, such as Brian K. Vaughan’s Y: The Last Man, which do not address the existence of trans and gender-nonconforming individuals. Unlike those, Manhunt puts trans people front and center.

A plague, T. rex, has infected all individuals with a high level of testosterone (mostly men), causing physical and mental disintegration and reducing them to a set of impulses to rape, maim, and kill any living thing nearby. Trans women become manhunters because testicles and kidneys are a source of estrogen, which they need both to be feminized and to overcome the testosterone that would make them vulnerable to T. rex. The flip side of this is that TERFs have taken over and will shoot and kill any trans women. Fran and Beth are manhunters who have an unfortunate encounter with TERFs and are later attacked by a pack of men who rape Beth. They are rescued by a trans man, Robbie, and take their bounty, and Robbie, to Indi, who has medical training and can use the testicles to synthesize estrogen. Indi has been invited to be the doctor for a compound for trans women and brings Fran, Beth, and Robbie with her. While initially this seems a safer path, something is seriously wrong there. There’s a rebellion, the compound burns, and the survivors create a new community and start planning an attack on the TERFs.

Ramona is a TERF close to the leader, Teach. She is secretly involved with a trans woman, and when the relationship is discovered her lover is executed and she is put in charge of cleaning out all trans women from the city. Fran gets involved with her and Ramona betrays Teach. However, she is not caught because another woman confesses to helping the trans women. The scene of her execution is incredibly painful and gory. Felker-Martin’s answer to the question of what would happen if men really were out of the picture is that there are women who will step in to do the same kinds of terrible things.

This is rage-filled and clearly very personal to the author, who is a trans woman. It doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable or disturbing emotions or situations, I can’t begin to say how difficult this was for me to read and finish, but I also couldn’t look away. It’s a powerful book, with a lot about the value of community, and made me think about the difficulties trans people face that I have the privilege not to reckon with as a cis woman. I think it’s is likely to be a classic in the genre.

Contains: transphobia, transphobic slurs, cannibalism, rape, body horror

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski