Review by Booklist Review
Nieva's debut expands his O'Henry award-winning short story into a full novel. The result is a dystopian fever dream that's equal parts poetic and profane, beautiful and splattered with gore. In the year 2272, the polar ice caps have melted, Patagonia is a tropical archipelago, Antarctica is the new Caribbean, terraforming technology is used to create paradises only for the rich, and global corporations make fortunes off of pandemics. Dengue Boy is a mutant mosquito, born to a human mother, who is ostracized as child and grows up to wreak destruction. His foil is El Dulce, an entirely self-centered tween who helps smuggle contraband through Patagonia, whose only real interest is getting his hands on a prime video game console, and who comes face-to-face with a primordial force beyond reckoning. Furthermore, there's a hallucinogenic video game that breaks the concept of time and causation. Dengue Boy is a trip. It's a cry of rage against the inhumanity of corporate greed, a mourning for the destruction of our climate, a warning of the dangers we're unlocking from the thawing ground, and a heartbreaking loss of hope for the future of mankind. It's a pessimistic and transformative experience that is powerful, challenging, rewarding, and difficult to sit with.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Argentine writer Nieva sets his ingenious and outré English-language debut, expanded from an O. Henry Prize--winning short story, in a far-future world radically altered by climate change. It's 2272 and the Caribbean Sea extends into South America's Pampas, Buenos Aires has sunk into the ocean, and the Antarctic has thawed into a humid new Patagonia. The global economy is tied up in "virofinance," from which investors have grown rich by speculating on pandemics. Dengue Boy, a child-mosquito hybrid spawned from a vaccine experiment gone wrong, battles bullies at school, renames herself Dengue Girl, and goes on a quest to discover the truth of her parentage. Her journey takes her from the La Pampa Stock Exchange to the terraformed Antarctic Caribbean as she vows to see mosquitos "reign over this world!" Other narrative threads involve sinister time-traveler Noah Nuclopio, whose rise to power is linked to the popular video game Christian vs. Indians, in which players participate in colonial genocide, as well as telepathic stones, which might be humanity's only hope of surviving the coming insect revolution. It all culminates in a showdown between Dengue Girl--now evolving into the prophesied Mighty Anarch--and Noah, who holds both the secret of Dengue Girl's creation and a Borgesian power to fuse past and present into a so-called "eternal origin of the world." Delightfully gonzo and hilariously surreal, this novel turns nightmarish visions into vital art. It's a sui generis showstopper. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A mosquito-borne fever dream that fleshes out the author's 2022 O. Henry Award--winning short story. Coming from a literary tradition known for magical realism and societal criticism, Argentine writer Nieva's English-language debut boils both into a hallucinogenic cocktail about the end of one world and the beginnings of another. Earth is in sorry shape in 2272--the polar ice caps have melted away, leaving much of South America underwater with Antarctica the new Patagonia. Meanwhile, the divide between the poor (everyone) and the ultrawealthy is stretched to garish proportions as investors rake in fortunes betting on the emergence of new viruses and enjoy the apocalypse on luxurious cruise ships. This is the future given to the titular antihero, a human/mosquito hybrid with insectlike features, a disdainful mother, and a burgeoning existential crisis. Banished to a torturous summer camp, young Dengue Boy abruptly becomes Dengue Girl, slaughters a classmate, and sets off on a revenge tour, vowing "Mosquitos, reign over this world!" We also meet René Racedo, the daughter of an influential virofinance broker, who's obsessed with a violent, genocide-themed videogame that pits "Christians vs. Indians," and Noah Nuclopio, the time-traveling founder of Ascension Industries and Solutions, whose connections to Dengue Girl are closer than they appear. It's an otherworldly trip reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's altered states, complete with telepathic stones and a thriving bootleg trade in both illegal stimulants and "sheepies"--more "sexual organ with autonomy and a life of its own"than electronic sheep. It's a bit hard to know what to make of the book, whether as an acidic prosecution of colonialism, capitalism, and climate change denial or a hyper-exaggerated back door into identity and body horror. Ultimately, it's about transformation as an elemental force--of the self, body, or world--delivered as a mighty yelp of defiance from a most unusual prophet. A hyperkinetic, audacious grotesquerie about metamorphosis and the inevitability of change. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
