FKA USA: a Novel

In 2085, with America broken into numerous countries, young Truckee Wallace is tasked with saving civilization by taking a talking goat cross-continent. He's joined by a gentle-souled former convict who's had a lobotomy and an android who wishes he were human, and off they head along what sounds like a futuristic dystopian yellow brick road. By a pseudonymous New York Times best-selling author and TV writer; already buzzing.

April 1, 2019
Uneven worldbuilding makes this dull, sprawling postapocalyptic picaresque a bit of a mess; the blend of mayhem and farce never gels. In the 2080s the United States has been replaced by multiple political entities, but King relegates details of how this came to be to appendices, leaving readers to try to patch together scraps from the main text, a journal kept by Truckee Wallace. Truckee is an employee of a processing plant for artificial food in the northeastern region known as Crunch, United. The head of his company assigns Truckee to travel west, accompanied by a talking goat named Barnaby, and stop the inventor of a chip that links frontal lobes with electronic devices from becoming even more powerful. King throws out head-scratching references to a Second Civil War having been caused by the First Lady’s legs, and to Texas and California, which have seceded from the union, forming a political alliance. He also blithely uses mass disasters as fodder for jokes. This dreary slog isn’t worth the effort. Agent: Stephen Barbara, InkWell Management.

April 15, 2019
In 2084, a daring young orphan is tapped by the president to deliver a talking goat to a laboratory in San Francisco. Yes, really. This book is quite strange but eminently readable and kinetic in a manner that mashes up pop culture, video game tropes, apocalyptic visions, and a meaningful nod to the peculiar humor of Douglas Adams. While there's a lot of bizarre aspects here and quite a twisty plot, you can break down this novel by King (a pseudonym for an apparently accomplished author and television writer, so let the guessing game begin) into its essential parts. In sum, this is a quest novel, and like all good quest novels, there is an order to things. There is always a fellowship: in this case, 16-year-old orphan Truckee Wallace, who lives in what was Little Rock; the aforementioned talking goat, Barnaby; a quite likable female-identifying android named Sammy; and Tiny Tim, who's unfortunately got a head full of bad wiring; not to mention a host of other grifters, addicts, robot escorts, and other denizens of the loosely collected, nuclear-ravaged city-states identified in the title (as in, Formerly Known as the United States of America). There's always a mission in a quest novel, and in this case the president asks Truckee to deliver Barnaby to San Francisco, a perilous journey indeed. There's a plot here somewhere, something to do with a search for immortality, but Truckee's epic journey is brimming with so many fantastic characters, so much outlandish imagery, and odd little tics like footnotes and selections from a book called The Grifter's Guide to the Territories FKA USA that readers who are into semicomical fantasy novels will find plenty to like regardless of how it all turns out. Like all quests, there are also a few villains, a prize, and a sacrifice that turns out to be rather touching in the end. Here we go. An epically concocted apocalyptic vision of America in all its faded glory.

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Starred review from May 1, 2019
King's cunning debut, set in the late 2080's, presents itself as the tenth edition of an immensely popular memoir. The country formerly known as the United States of America, which went to hell in a handbasket due to climate, political, and commercial mismanagement, has devolved into a group of technologically advanced, corporate-run nation-states. Sixteen-year-old Truckee, a reluctant hero if ever there was one, has been given a mission by the president: he must sneak into enemy territory and deliver a talking goat carrying vital brain cells to a sleeper agent to stop a global apocalypse of mind-controlled zombies. Accompanying him on this outlandish road trip are an android who wants to be human and a mountain of a man who, due to surgical lobotomization, is somewhat less than human. No one has told Truckee what will happen if the goat discovers he is being taken to his doom. Each chapter begins with advice from a grifter's travel manual, the text is sprinkled with informative footnotes, and the author generously provides maps and appendices to add context to the outrageous story. Readers who like their apocalyptic fiction with a hearty serving of weird will want to jump on board for this wild ride.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)