It feels like we should have a slew of post-apocalyptic and virus stories come out of the pandemic, but there are only a few of note – to date.
Kay Chronister’s Desert Creatures flits with apocalypse themes and aligns them with other horrific elements.
We follow a young girl Magdala, who right from the outset is clearly pitched as pivotal to surviving or evolving from the disaster the lands on the outskirts of Las Vegas find themselves in.
What Desert Creatures does really well is world-building, to the point you can almost feel the sand blow across your face as Magdala and her father look to make sense of this ‘new normal’.
On the flipside it doesn’t fully exploit its mysterious sickness to a point where the reader is fully with her journey. She is a layered character but those around her feel quite hollow. Whether this is intentional is open to debate.
Ultimately, this is a serviceable enough virus horror, but does quite scale the heights of say Tim Lebbon’s Eden.
Desert Creatures is available now from Titan Books.
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