Quarter Finalist

Assessment:

Plot/Idea:  Apnea will keep readers on the edge of their seats from start to finish. Occasionally, there are moments that would benefit from minor refinement (i.e. the placement of Alice Munroe’s story depicting her husband's death and further exploration of revolutionary Judith). Overall, this dystopian tale is plotted beautifully. Tension remains taut until the very end.

Prose:  This nightmarish, dystopian, surreal world is painted to all its splendor. The author does not spare the vivid, evocative details that make this world come to life. Poetic, rich, gory, horrific, and lyrically beautiful.

Originality: A pandemic is unraveling society as we know it: a virus that afflicts only men wipes them out one by one in their sleep. A cure does exist, but it forces them to stay awake for 21 days straight. The premise for this story is deeply haunting and original. Basic human needs are pinned against the stake of death—to sleep would equal certain death, but to stay awake beckons certain insanity. The tale is fresh, haunting, alluring, philosophical, and relevant to our times.

Character/Execution: This work features fully developed, rich characters that are offered deep context and backstory. The only characters that long for additional refining are Virginia and Judith. Virginia is painted as a perfect wife, then is suddenly holding her husband hostage against his will. While the author does allow her inner world to explore her motivations, a more organic buildup to her abusive antics may be beneficial. Meanwhile, Judith is deserving of more details relating to her personal anger and motivations against men. 

Blurb: This nightmarishly dystopian, Kafkaesque novel will have readers feverishly turning the pages.

Date Submitted: April 03, 2023

This defiantly alienating novel of gender and dystopia in a near-future Anywhere, America, finds a man named Joseph Conrad unlucky enough to survive “The Great Sleep,” the night when a mysterious virus Y killed 40% of the male population. When Joe, too, eventually tests positive, the only cure is XAPNEA, a drug that keeps the host awake for 21 straight days: if he sleeps, he dies. Unfortunately, the human brain can’t survive without sleep, and Joe’s is no exception. On XAPNEA, Joe and his wife Virginia’s hallucinations become increasingly bizarre, with scenes of them seeming to transform into bugs observed by malevolent shoebills as their marriage decays in a paroxysm of sexual violence. Meanwhile, vigilante women known as the Butchies are on a hunt to mercy-kill the infected, and Joe is a target.

Sizemore’s vivid prose lends itself well to erotic, disgusting, and violent hallucinatory sequences that accompany some delightfully surreal illustrations. The emotional intimacy of marriage is the essential backdrop of Apnea’s most poignant and viscerally revolting passages, but when the narrative focus shifts to shock gore the psychological horror loses power. Both main narrators, Joe and Judith “The Butcher” Butler, have compelling interiority, and there’s some chilling speculative ideas, here, as the authorities engineer pregnancies to guarantee male children, the government targets non-heteronormative relationships, and terrorists declare themselves quite literally “anti-WOKE.”

Lovers of the horror grotesque will find much to bite into as Apnea at its best honors its aspirations: the Cronenbergian, the Grand Guignol, the darkly erotic, the taboo-smashingly outré. But the provocations aren't always controlled, an interrogation of the censorship of art edges into the defensive and absurd, and its sexual politics and violence, whatever the author’s intentions, often suggest trolling. Still, Sizemore’s novel boasts arresting prose and much in the way of guts.

Takeaway: Gut-churning, taboo-flouting horror in a future where a pandemic is killing men.

Great for fans of: Nego Huzcotoq's Severed Roots, Catriona Ward’s The Last House on Needless Street

Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: B-
Marketing copy: B