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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
Monster Hunting in Newtonville by Viktor Csák follows John Debenham, who lives inside a fortified Boston where a strict boundary, the Red Line, separates the surviving colony from the ruined city. He stays afloat by secretly escorting people and cargo past the Red Line, into the post-outbreak streets that created feral human predators. When Icelandic smugglers offer scarce medicine for a sick child in exchange for a private expedition, John accepts a deal tying him to Anton Morozov, a wealthy foreigner intent on filming a kill inside the forbidden zone. Joined by Anton’s sons and John’s associates, the group enters Newtonville under tight time limits and constant surveillance. As colony authorities interfere and feral activity escalates, John knows that failure has consequences far beyond the hunt itself.
Ok, now that was a fun read! Monster Hunting in Newtonville by Viktor Csák is a rare kind of speculative fiction novel in that it mixes together the dystopian undead with a top-flipping trophy hunt angle, and the result is a gamed system within an already rigged, authoritarian colony. This is survival managed through deception and sanctioned by leadership, and it is absolutely brilliant. It's all fun and games until the fail-safes fail, and those ferals chained in a suburban garage aren't such an easy target anymore. Csák gives this world a textured feel, and the most heartbreaking and inspiring is Olivia’s refusal to accept colony rules that deny her child medicine. John is the flawed protagonist we all look for in a novel, and when paired with a rigid system, a compromise to wrong a right, a chase that ratchets up a gloriously high body count, and a relentless pace, you have a book worth reading.
