FKA USA

In 2084, a daring young orphan is tapped by the president to deliver a talking goat to a laboratory in San Francisco. Yes, really.

This book is quite strange but eminently readable and kinetic in a manner that mashes up pop culture, video game tropes, apocalyptic visions, and a meaningful nod to the peculiar humor of Douglas Adams. While there’s a lot of bizarre aspects here and quite a twisty plot, you can break down this novel by King (a pseudonym for an apparently accomplished author and television writer, so let the guessing game begin) into its essential parts. In sum, this is a quest novel, and like all good quest novels, there is an order to things. There is always a fellowship: in this case, 16-year-old orphan Truckee Wallace, who lives in what was Little Rock; the aforementioned talking goat, Barnaby; a quite likable female-identifying android named Sammy; and Tiny Tim, who’s unfortunately got a head full of bad wiring; not to mention a host of other grifters, addicts, robot escorts, and other denizens of the loosely collected, nuclear-ravaged city-states identified in the title (as in, Formerly Known as the United States of America). There’s always a mission in a quest novel, and in this case the president asks Truckee to deliver Barnaby to San Francisco, a perilous journey indeed. There’s a plot here somewhere, something to do with a search for immortality, but Truckee’s epic journey is brimming with so many fantastic characters, so much outlandish imagery, and odd little tics like footnotes and selections from a book called The Grifter’s Guide to the Territories FKA USA that readers who are into semicomical fantasy novels will find plenty to like regardless of how it all turns out. Like all quests, there are also a few villains, a prize, and a sacrifice that turns out to be rather touching in the end. Here we go.

An epically concocted apocalyptic vision of America in all its faded glory.