Apocalypse Now Now (Paperback)

Charlie Human’s Apocalypse Now Now is a rip-roaring addition to the bout of ex­cellent speculative and other genre fiction by South African authors like Lauren Beukes, Sarah Lotz, and S.A. Partridge. The main character is Baxter Zevcenko, a 16-year-old kingpin of a schoolyard pornography syndicate. Baxter is razor-sharp, and darkly funny, and the novel dazzles with extremely quotable one-liners.

All hell breaks loose when Baxter’s girlfriend Esmé is kidnapped and he is plunged into Cape Town’s supernatural underworld. An unusual tooth found at the scene of Esmé’s disappearance leads Baxter to the door of supernatural bounty hunter Jackie Ronin. Together they set out to rescue Esmé and cross paths with a West African glowing man; the notorious Queen of the Nightwalkers; and a bent weapons-chemist named Basson. Baxter’s sudden immersion in the paranormal leaves him with little time to realise that he is about to become the final cog in Basson’s master plan – one that could create an apocalypse that will obliterate the world.

Apocalypse Now Now is a laugh-a-minute, entertaining and interesting book that will be enjoyed even by readers new to the genre. It’s fantastic in every sense of the word, will be published in the United Kingdom and South Africa simultaneously, and marks the beginning of this young writer’s promising career.