content warnings: violence, mentions of cannibalism
representation: vietnamese-american main character, black side character, minor characters of colour


As a nerd, this was a lot of fun to read. The story is set five years after the apocalypse and follows Victor, a reporter who has just been given a seemingly impossible assignment: go back to Long Con, the convention centre where the apocalypse originally broke out. Many apocalyptic shenanigans ensue.

This book transitions between Victor at said convention with an old friend five years ago and him in present day as he navigates the apocalyptic world. The transitions were done really fluidly and with quite a lot of skill when it came to the time jumps. But there would also be times when it would show snippets from classic geeky shows within the universe of the book, and those honestly didn't do much for me.

The characters are currently just fine, none of them really being standouts but also none of them being awful. They definitely have room to grow in future installments, though, so I'm not giving up on any of them just yet.

My favourite part of this was definitely the commentary about fandoms, specifically comic book, sci-fi and fantasy fandoms. There's discussions on how women are seen as automatically inferior in geeky spaces and get called 'fake geek girls', the way that fans feel entitled to their favourite works and creators, the sexist drawings of women in comic books, and many more.

Even though this was just some okay fun I can definitely see the future potential and am excited for what's to come.

I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.