Immobility by Brian Evenson

Josef Horkai is a new breed of human. He has super human strength and is able to miraculously heal from any sustained injury. Nature, or rather human folly has singled him out in a new and perilous world. The Planet (Earth) has sustained a catastrophic annihilation event. Most ordinary humans didn’t survive and the ones that did live in a post-apocalyptic world. Survivors hole up in small buildings that endure in a ravaged landscape. Because he is able to live in a world where ordinary humans die of exposure in minutes, he is a valuable commodity to the competing factions that fight over what little that is left. I won’t tell you what these factions are or their purpose, but the book A Canticle for Leibowitz by William M. Miller comes to mind.  Another novel also comes to mind: The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which I have not read but I did see the movie. Josef strives to prevail in a world that he has little knowledge of since he has been cryogenically frozen for the past thirty years and sent on a mission that he understands little about.

This is a grim, ultra dark thriller that hooks you from the first page. It is a fast read, but a real nightmare to think about. Other books by Brian Evenson are  Windeye, Fugue State, and The Open Curtain.

Joel