Necessary Ill

by Deb Taber

$20 (paperback)
$9.95 (e-book)	EPUB	MOBI

Read a sample from the book.

The man slices Jin's shirt open with his pocketknife, then stops, staring at the blank, bare chest.
“Never thought it would make such a difference,” says the second man, twisting Jin's arm at a painful angle so that he, too, can see the smooth skin, unbroken by anything so unnecessary as a nipple.
A woman runs up hollering, waving a shotgun in the air as the first man claws at Jin's belt. The rest of the street is suddenly empty.
“Get off of her you perverts! If you lay one finger…”
She sees Jin and stops…

Jin, the neuter protagonist of Necessary Ill, begins the novel as a designer of plagues intended to set the world back into balance—a balance of population and resources, creation and destruction, choice and certainty—a balance more important to it than any individual life, including its own. Sandy, a young woman thrust violently out of her farm life into the dispassionate science of neuters like Jin, discovers her own need for balance—a balance of safety and adventure, art and science, self-protection and love. But Jin and Sandy find that human life is full of change, and as the world is thrown off balance for all, each questions their ruling assumptions and must learn to see in new ways for the survival of friends and enemies alike.

Suzy McKee Charnas, author of Dorothea Dreams and the Holdfast Chronicles, writes: “Necessary Ill offers hopeful glimpses of alternatives to the current cultural barrage of post-Apocalyptic savagery and regression to warlordism. Along the way, the reader finds an in-depth exploration of what a human society minus sex hormones might be like. It’s also a startlingly inward look at a character that is basically a serial mass murderer and also a hero capable of change. A stimulating read with a refreshing slant on the core problems of the modern world.”

Reviews

"Taber's debut novel presents an all-too-credible dystopic future world and, in Jin, a complex character whose mind approaches the world and its priorities in a very different way. The characterization of truly genderless individuals—not androgynes or hermaphrodites—and the portrayal of an approach to the world that is both ruthless and compassionate make this an excellent candidate for book discussion groups and provide strong evidence for the availability of significant genre literature. Highly recommended."
  —Library Journal, starred review, March 15, 2013

What Taber's surface tale resembles is a blend of James Tiptree's famous genocidal fable “The Last Flight of Doctor Ain” mashed up with Michel Faber's novel Under the Skin, in which an alien masquerading as a human female relentlessly harvest humans for food. And when you factor in Sandy's grokking-the-Other thread, elements of Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness or Karen Lord's The Best of All Possible Worlds seem to emerge as well. It all makes for a rich and provocative reading experience that blends the cerebral with the emotional. (read the whole review)
  —Paul di Filippo, Locus Online Reviews, March 17, 2013

"Skillful pacing, unpredictable twists, nail-bitingingly tense moments, and an adroit resolution make this an unusual and engrossing addition to the post-apocalyptic genre."
  —Publishers Weekly, Jan 28, 2013 (starred review)

"The author speculates about how individuals and society might evolve if sex wasn't such a potent part of the human personality. Some readers may find the sometimes dispassionate discussion of mass murder a bit unsettling but no one should find fault with the prose. Not the cheeriest book I've read this year but one of the more thought provoking." (read the whole review)
  — Don D'Ammassa, Critical Mass, Jan 12, 2013

“At its heart, Necessary Ill concerns itself with character and situation; with the social experience of marked vs. unmarked bodies, and the ethics of preservation of life. Is it better to kill many in order that the species might survive? Is it right to permit the human race to drive itself to extinction, if by one's actions one can prevent it? Is it ever possible to act ethically in taking choices away from other people? Necessary Ill doesn't answer the questions it raises, or at least not all of them. But it asks them thoughtfully, and with an eye for character that makes for an enjoyable read.”(read the whole review)
  — Liz Bourke, Tor.com, March, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-61976-022-6 (13 digit)
Publication Date: Mar 2013
paperback 352 pages