Rina Rusyaeva Rusyaeva من عند Kanyamoni, West Bengal, الهند من عند Kanyamoni, West Bengal, الهند

As a mix tape queen, I loved how each chapter started with the contents of an actual mix tape. My favorite one? The one full of cheesy ass early 90s top 40. Oh yeah... Such a heartbreaking story, but such a wonderful way of paying tribute to his late wife. If you're nutso about mix tapes and totally knew what Rob from High Fidelity was talking about when planning a playlist for a mix tape, you'll love this book.

Slattery writes of an anarchic United States after the dollar has collapsed and the country has ripped itself apart. Slavery has returned as an organized venture (people on the verge of starving to death sell themselves into slavery, and slavers capture refugees from war torn areas), and the Slick Six, a gang of master criminals, has to figure out how to navigate the wasteland. The characters and story throb with a wealth of detail: Slattery imagines a variety of social and societal structures emerging from the cataclysm, from a “free state” that forbids slavery, to a chaotic New York ruled by a mysterious corporate raider known as “The Aardvark.” The most captivating ideas for me, by far, were the two spontaneous gatherings that emerged from the Central states. On one hand, you have the “Seven Days of Light,” a Burning-Man kind of party in the desert where people gather under strings of lights and rave for days. On the other hand, there’s a chaotic gathering of circus animals and performers, a whirling cyclone of death that rips through towns and destroys them, ravaging the people and murdering or eating them. It’s a reaver colony in the midwest. Slattery calls it the Carnival of Industrial Destruction. It’s an enjoyable book laced through with chaos and violence as well as a little Utopianism. 4 stars out of 5