Moths by Jane Hennigan

Where were you at the beginning? Or at the end? And where are we all now? 

Forty years ago, the world changed. Toxic threads left behind by mutated moths infected men and boys around the globe. Some were killed quietly in their sleep, others became crazed killers, wildly dangerous and beyond help. All seemed hopeless. But humanity adapted, healed and moved on. Now matriarchs rule, and men are kept in specially treated dust-free facilities for their safety and the good of society, never able to return to the outside. 

Mary has settled into this new world and takes care of the male residents at her facility. But she still remembers how things used to be and is constantly haunted by her memories. Of her family, of her joy, of… him. 

Now the world is quiet again, but only because secrets are kept safe in whispers. And the biggest secret of all? No one wants to live inside a cage… 

Exploring male violence against women, homo-normativity, and gynocracy, Moths is a powerful assessment of life through the lens of a main character in her 70s. A remastered and revitalised version of the previously self-published, smash-hit dystopian thriller by the same name, Moths shows us a new, post-pandemic world.

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Wow. What a terrifying scenario! Moths, disturbed by rainforest logging, emerge and breed with other species of moths. The threads they produce are devastating to men, killing about half of them outright and inducing psychosis in the other half, causing violence and mania. As the threads are airborne, the violence sweeps around the world in about 24 hours, and women have to struggle to protect themselves and each other.

This is set in England, mostly a little over forty years after the initial outbreak with flashbacks to it. There are two generations of women who have never known men as anything other than protected, cossetted beings kept in facilities meant to keep them safe from the threads. Only the oldest ones remember the days of violence, and they are mostly dismissed by the younger ones, treated as a relic of a different time.

This is not the kind of novel that spoonfeeds you; a lot of new terminology has appeared, and it's mostly left to us to figure it out from context. The flashbacks come from two different characters who had two very different experiences during the outbreak, which gives us a good look at it. Near the end of the novel, one character muses on what might have happened if the roles were reversed; it's an interesting question and one I'd love to see explored sometime.

A great start to the series, and I'm off to read the second one!

Moths is available now. I received a free copy and am giving an honest review.