Black Lawrence Press
Published August 5, 2025
“You know,” the girl said, pausing to look around the suite, “amid all this madness, they kind of have their shit together.”
“They butcher people into little pieces,” Biv responded, “selecting them at random, then wearing their victims’ body parts like costumes.” (Spare Parts)
Across nine fragments and a century in the same world (ours?), a near-future pre-and-post apocalyptic (yes, think bunkers, clones, and extreme classism) society stumbles its way through one daily horror after another in this new story collection. But, under Case Q. Kerns’ deft thumb, their trials and pains, poor choices and deaths are, well, not quite a delight or a pleasure, but thoroughly enjoyable to consume.
The collection of stories, building upon one another, retracing steps and fleeting bits of magic here and there as their paths fork, is dark. It is also a linguistically elegant, if emotionally removed, take on what possibilities our collective future might hold should (when) things really hit the fan.
Early on, characters warn of what’s to come: “She likes you when you make her life easier,” Ana said as she poured disinfectant over my wound. “She won’t be so generous when you don’t.” (The Man Who Knew the Collage). The tiny injustices and ways in which we inflict cruelties upon one another are amplified, salt and human connection and experimental science raised to godly positions in society. Before (whatever) apocalypse, debt is inevitable; after, life at all uncertain.
Despite all the darkness, Kerns seems hopeful to me still. Love and sacrifice for those loved ones, endless, boundless and unconditional love, permeates the stories, the characters slashing and stabbing their ways through the fields of foes. If a young girl can crown herself king of the new world, why can’t we too imagine one as community-driven as hers?
