Gretchen Felker-Martin is back! It’s been two years since Manhunt dropped, and the world is still reeling from her spectacularly violent, grimy apocalypse novel. Now she’s written an arguably darker tale of queer fear in Cuckoo.
Like its predecessor, Cuckoo is undeniably a queer horror story. The novel introduces us to a group of teens, each of whom has been violently removed from their home and forcefully transported across the country. Their only crime? Being a queer teen in the 90s, for which their parents shipped them off to be changed. When they arrive at Camp Resolution, a desert-based conversion camp, they have nothing but each other, and no idea what they’re about to face. They don’t even know what state they’re in. Far from home and cut off from the outside world, they’ll have to band together to make it out unchanged.
Camp Resolution is, in a word, weird. The educational curriculum is pseudoscience, the physical activities consist of backbreaking labor or myriad household chores (depending on assigned sex), and the counselors are not just prone to violence but actively encourage it. The campers who have been there longer are brutal to the newcomers, and even Pastor Eddie, the leader of the camp, won’t hesitate to beat any of the teens who don’t bow to his whims.
Something darker still lurks in the shadows of Camp Resolution, though. The campers who have graduated from the program are… different. Not themselves anymore (and while some would argue that yes, that’s the point of a conversion camp, Resolution’s strategy relies a lot less on prayer and the Bible). Then, the dreams begin. The same dream. Each camper is digging a hole, and they find their own body buried deep in the earth. Something is reaching out to them, speaking to them… preparing them. Our ragged misfits know that they have to escape the camp, before they too are irrevocably changed.
Gretchen Felker-Martin absolutely nailed the building dread in Cuckoo. This book is just as filthy as Manhunt, and I mean that in the best way of describing her aesthetics and worldbuilding. I was thrilled to find out that her sophomore effort was an incredibly solid piece of horror. Cuckoo is out in the world today. Go get it. Read it. Get scared. Repeat.
My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.
The Swords of the Ancients 