THE INSANE GOD

Hartlove’s latest blends dark fantasy, apocalyptic fiction, and cosmic horror in an impressively unique thriller that pits a transgender girl institutionalized with schizophrenia against a cult leader who believes an approaching meteor shower will herald the end of the world.

Sixteen-year-old Sarah Meyer has been a patient at the Sandstone Rehabilitation Center for much of her life. Orphaned after her parents died in a car crash and suffering from psychosis, Sarah—who was assigned male at birth—has been afflicted with the presence of looming, monstrous apparitions and their incessant voices for years. But when she wakes up one day and the monsters are inexplicably absent, she realizes that, although she has been miraculously cured, something much darker is at work in the world. She and her brother Nate begin piecing together the mystery of her recovery, which is tied to meteorite fragments that have fallen to Earth. The fragments, Sarah discovers, are pieces of two embattled gods—some pieces are imbued with unfathomable healing powers, while others fill people with homicidal rage. As Sarah comes to grips with her newfound abilities, which include lucid dreaming and the capacity to alter reality, the world races toward a bloody apocalypse. There is a lot to like in this narrative—including relentless pacing, nonstop action, bombshell plot revelations, and the author’s wry sense of humor throughout (as evidenced by the novel’s conclusion)—but the real power here comes from the cast of deeply developed characters. Sarah, specifically, is intriguingly complex, and her journey of self-discovery is profoundly moving. The dozens of grammatical errors, however, do put a damper on the novel’s readability. (There’s even an error in the first sentence: “Terror griped Sarah when she opened her pale blue eyes and saw the monsters were gone.”)

A flawed but fun apocalyptic thriller—Nightmare on Elm Streetmeets The Stand.