Manhunt is the first novel by Gretchen Felker-Martin.
Finished on: 6.5.2024

Content Note: rape, (critical treatment of) transmisia

Plot:
A few years ago, a mysterious illness swept the world that turned all cis men into feral beasts. Beth and Fran are traveling the country hunting for men to harvest their organs – as this is the only way they have to ensure that their testosterone levels never rise to a point that they will suffer the same fate, always taking care to avoid the militant TERFs that control most of the country. Meanwhile, Robbie has spend his time on his own, trusting nobody. But coincidence brings the three of them together and entwines their fates.

Manhunt is a reply to the myriad “gender plague” stories out there that not only considers but actually centers the trans perspective. As such, it is best read in the context of the political transmisic discussions of the last decade or so, though it is also a pretty good read in its own right.

If you are not as involved in queerfeminist discourse, Manhunt is probably a book that will leave you scratching your head a lot of the time. Just a couple of questions that might arise are: What is a TERF? And what does J.K. Rowling have to do with it? But if you have taken any interestin trans people and their struggles over the last decade, you will be very much aware of the strengthening rhetoric against them, of the TERF – or as they like to be referred to, gender critical – movement that advances bio-essentialist arguments in the name of supposed feminism. Hell, with the boxing incident at the Olympics and the worrying legislation passed all over the USA (and elsewhere), the arguments and their ramifications have been pretty much all over the news.

The other context to consider for Manhunt is the genre of “gender plague” books, novels that imagine a gender-based apocalypse and that rarely consider what gender even is. These books try to imagine a world where one gender somehow disappears, or is somehow altered (I read Black Canary: Breaking Silence, for example, and The Knife of Never Letting Go with its movie adaptation). Usually, they imagine gender as two clearly separated categories, no overlap, no other options and just run with it. But gender is much more complicated than that.

Manhunt now is a gender plague novel that tries to do right by what gender is and by trans and non-binary people who are most affected by the cissexism that usually permeates that genre. It starts rather simply with narrowing the plague to one (of the many) biological gender factors: testosterone levels. So the plague affects anybody with a certain testosterone level. That means that trans women on HRT are not affected, whereas trans men have to stop their HRT to stop the plague.

But more importantly, the book centers trans perspectives. The three main characters are trans themselves, two more important characters – Indi and Ramona – are cis women, and with them, it’s mostly about how they can relate to the trans characters around them given the circumstances. (On a sidenote, Indi is fat and disabled, something we practically never get to see in dystopian settings.) It really is a breath of fresh air for the genre, and shows how much the other entries in it fail more often than not.

Outside of the grander context, though, it is still a very readable horror novel. The main characters are flawed, but likable and definitely had me rooting for them. There is decent amount of gore, and there is a whole lot of sex, as befits the horror genre. And there were some excellent world-building ideas even outside of the gender stuff, like the entire bunker brat scenario. The pacing isn’t always right, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t enjoyable.

Since the book is so firmly rooted in the current state of the genre and the discourse about trans people at large, it and many of the references it uses, will probably feel dated in a couple of years. Or at least, I hope so. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t an important book to read (and to have been written) right now.

Summarizing: absolutely worth reading.