Desert Creatures
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A young girl and her father take a desperate pilgrimage through a blasted post-apocalyptic Mojave Desert to the Holy City of Las Vegas in this vivid and uncanny tale of outsiders in a dangerous world, perfect for fans of Lucy A. Snyder and Jeff Vandermeer.
An unknown devastation has swept across the United States, a sickness causes the dead to flower and sprout fruit, and the promise of miracles draws pilgrims from all over to the Holy City of Las Vegas.
Magdala and her father flee their home in the Sonora Desert, setting out across the wasteland in search of a cure for her disability. As they pass through blasted cities and ruined towns, they are forced to join with a group of survivors making their own pilgrimage.
But the road to Las Vegas is filled with danger, strange cults occupying the wreckage of towns, and uncanny stuffed men roaming the desert.
As a strange sickness begins to take hold, the band of survivors grows ever thinner, and months turn to years. Magdala finds herself placing her trust in the most unlikely of places, and the closer she gets to her holy destination, the further from salvation she seems.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This stomach-roiling dystopian western from Chronister (Thin Places) follows Magdala, age nine, when she starts on her yearslong pilgrimage to Las Vegas, now a holy city housing the relics of a saint she hopes will cure her clubfoot. If The Canterbury Tales was set in future Sonoran and Mojave deserts, it might look a little like this, as Magdala, her father, and their companions tell stories to pass the time. Across the novel's six sections, Magdala grows into a young adult and becomes hardened by her experiences with cruelty in the desert. Chronister offers little respite in what becomes an increasingly hopeless journey. The only real moment of kindness comes from the "cactus-sitters," a group who meditate on top of cacti and are generous to travelers who stumble across them; the rest of this far-future world has devolved into an every person for themselves society and the barren environment only fuels the characters' individualism. The result is challenging reading made all the more difficult by how plausible it feels as a model of the disastrous effects of climate change and scarcity. Readers who can stomach the unrelenting bleakness and depression will find plenty to hold their interest in Chronister's strange and frightening vision.
