Unnatural horrors and a town in peril: Stephen King’s Under the Dome meets
The Last of Us in this harrowing climate fiction novel.
When a hidden evil emerges from the depths of the ocean, the tight-knit town of
Baywood is caught in a climate disaster of mysterious origins: an unusual wave of
sea snails enter the estuary and transform wildlife, seascapes, and finally, people.
Once infected, residents start “deading”: collapsing and dying, only to resurrect,
changed in ways both physical and fundamental. After the government isolates
Baywood, paranoia and surveillance run rampant. A newly formed cult called the
Risers starts targeting those who are not deading: the introverted bird-loving Blas,
his jaded older brother, Chango, the widow Kumi, and her cautious neighbor,
Ingram. The survivors of Baywood eventually must choose to escape, to
investigate the deading’s origins, or to become subsumed by this terrifying new
normal.
At points claustrophobic and haunting, soulful and melancholic, The Deading
lyrically explores the disintegration of society, the horror of survival and
adaptation, and the unexpected solace found through connections in nature and
between humans.
