Desert Creatures (2022) by Kay Chronister
Erewhon | 352 pages
What it’s about: A speculative, post-apocalyptic, eco-horror, with Weird Western vibes. Magdala is a resourceful young girl seeking a cure for her disability in a hostile world on the edge of destruction. She is determined to reach Las Vegas where she can request the healing service of magical people called, Saints, while surviving the desolate and dangerous wasteland of the American Southwest. Hunting her are cactus-animal creatures and a bizarre religious group known for their grotesque rituals.
My thoughts: After reading and falling head-over-heels in love with The Bog Wife, I had to go back and read Chronister’s debut novel. It did not disappoint! There is so much to say about my experience, but I also want to protect some of the more unusual plot developments because they are so fun to discover as you read. I have to highlight the impeccable world-building. The landscape and atmosphere create a mood that lingers long after reading. I can *feel* it now, even as I type. An overarching theme of despair and hopelessness permeates throughout the narrative—which makes Magdala’s relentless advocacy for her own well-being, so endearing and emotional. The religious aspect is my favorite part of this story. The way that clinging to faith is sometimes the only thing people in desperate times have to keep themselves going.

Desert Creatures is beautifully haunting, both mystical and deeply human. It exemplifies what I love most about post-apocalyptic and end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it books: they explore what humanity means when pushed to its very limits.

The plot is engrossing, and I loved Chronister's style. I'm used to finding myself zoning out when reading long descriptions of a natural scene or an imagined world, but that wasn't the case with this one. I could see the creatures that Chronister created, I could see the desert world as her characters did.

"Desert Creatures" is perfect for fans of The Last of Us or The Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer. This survival story set in a post apocalyptic world is bleak and the book should include all the trigger warnings, but is well worth a read by anyone looking for a creepy story that will stick with you for a long time.

This was a visceral and sometimes horrific read that lost its way a little for me. I found the opening part following Magdala and her father absolutely gripping. The descriptions of the desert landscapes were stunning and the creatures they encountered (both human and otherwise) were truly horrific. The way in which this part played out was shocking and brutal and for me, the following two parts just didn't quite match up. Overall, I enjoyed my time with the book, but I just wish it could have maintained the quality of the first act.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Desert Creatures is a novel that felt like part Annihilation, part Oryx & Crake, part western, and part religious mysticism. The story of Magdala told at three stages of her life in a post-apocalyptic dystopian world filled with old religion that has new figures. Las Vegas has become a holy city and people make pilgrimages through the desert, or try to, in order to visit a holy figure that is told to be healing. Magdala has a club foot and is in search of this healing. As happens in life, challenges get in the way and eventually there is a different resolution for Magdala.

For me, the third part of the book was the strongest. I felt like the author really found her voice and Magdala also found hers and I would have loved for this section to be longer. It ultimately felt a little rushed to get to the end but overall it was an enjoyable first novel from Kay Chronister and I look forward to reading more from them.

I'm catching up on reviews so... Thank you to NetGalley and ErewhonBooks for access to this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

I absolutely enjoyed this book. The creeping dread was present from the beginning and never really let up. One of the things I especially loved was the absolute sense of place. I may be biased having lived in the Arizona desert but all of the descriptions rang so true to me bringing in a realness to the story.

This book. The cover is absolutely beautiful, but I can’t remember exactly why I picked it up. Sad to say, if I hadn’t have been at a doc appointment with a long wait time, I probably would have DNFed. But thanks to the medical complex’s inability to run on time and only having this in my bag, I finished it. Though I did skim parts in the second half.

I know. I’m really selling it. I would describe it as dystopian, climate fiction with a small dash of horror. A young girl with a club foot travels across the desert with her father in search of healing at the shrine of a saint in the holy city of Las Vegas. The desert is cruel, like humanity, and she runs into many heartaches along the way.

It took a long time for me to finish this book because it was hard to connect with the characters and the story as a whole.

In the hopes of being healed in the now holy city of Las Vegas, Magdala and her father embark on a perilous pilgrimage. Set in an unforgiving post-apocalyptic world, we follow Magdala's journey of growth and discovery. While the storyline follows Magdala in different stages of her life, the true main character of this book is the desert.

My first DNF of the year 👎 I was interested to see what this book was all about because the cover is truly gorge and I’ve seen a lot of mixed reviews. But I just failed to connect with it in any and all ways. I definitely wanted to know more about what happened to the world! When I realized that I wasn’t going to be satisfied in that department, the interest I had just disappeared. And I’m trying to be better about putting books down when they’re not for me.

The main character and her father are exiled from their home in the western-ish portion of a post-apocalyptic United States. They meet up with a group of survivors trying to make it to Las Vegas where the saints reside. The novel is split into three parts, all following the progress of the main character as she fights her way through the desert to Las Vegas and the horrors she meets along the way.

Not for me, but I have seen a lot of positive reviews, so no reason not to go for it if you’re interested.

Don’t let the DNF guilt get you down!

2.5⭐️


I absolutely love the cover and that is what drew me in. But sadly, I didn't care for this book at all but I still powered through. I was confused throughout the book and I just couldn't connect or really care about what had happened. This one may not be for me but it may be for you. 



Thank you NetGalley and publishers for this ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to Erewhon and Netgalley for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest, spoiler-free review.

Desert Creatures is an alternative dystopian/western with elements of spirituality and the supernatural by Kay Chronister and published by Erewhon. The story focuses on Magdala, who starts the novel as a 9-year-old who’s navigating a harsh world with her father. The two of them make their way through Sonoran Desert which is filled with horrific creatures and find a place amongst a community of survivors. As Magdala ages, Desert Creatures follows her journey for redemption, to the new spiritual center of the county, Las Vegas. Along the way Magdala forms relationships that shape the woman she becomes, all while trying to survive in a harsh new world. Can Magadla find the salvation she’s worked a lifetime to achieve?

Desert Creatures had me captivated from beginning to end. Kay Chronister’s writing is a poetic, dark and beautiful, a mixture that serves the story very well. Magdala’s journey of discovery and maturity is relatable and at times utterly heartbreaking. Chronister has made her a character that readers start out feeling sorry for and by story’s end are rooting her on for her resilience and fortitude. As a father myself I couldn’t help but feel protective of Magdala for the cards she’s been dealt in life (both physical and otherwise), but as she matures and becomes hardened to the world I became her biggest champion by the end. Chronister does an amazing job of crafting a lead character that readers want to see succeed, flaws and all.

An unexpected element to Desert Creatures are themes that deal with spirituality and religion. Having Magdala’s journey also be a spiritual one adds depth and shines a light on an aspect of life rarely explored in popular fiction. Chronister doesn’t shy away from the aspects of religion that can be messy and/or tarnished by flawed humans. There are characters who do terrible and amazing things, both in the name of religion, making for a novel that, while firmly fictional, resonates in today’s real world too. Having this aspect of humanity included and explored makes Desert Creatures utterly unique, a stand out in modern speculative fiction.

Desert Creatures bends and twists the coming of age narrative into something that’s equal parts horrifying, beautiful, and inspiring. For lovers of modern fiction, and English class, I can’t recommend it enough. I give Desert Creatures 🧢🧢🧢🧢/5 recommend!

Tight and a little depressing. Currently DNF-ed, but I do want to go back to it when I'm at a better mental space. The writing is picturesque, with a deep sense of connection to the land and spirituality SO FAR, but slow and reflective.

This is a gripping story filled with survival. The writing is atmospheric and rich in detail and I found it to be thought provoking.
Many thanks to Erewhon Books and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I loved the majority of this book with the viciousness of the land in this dystopian sort of world. Everything else that went along with that was pretty good as well. I myself am not into religion or anything related to it, so it was a little much for me in that department but that shouldn't deter other people from wanting to read this book. It was just too much for my personal taste. But if you love world building in a post-apocalyptic world, this may be the book for you.

Desert Creatures is a narrative of faith and destruction in the desert wastes and a post-apocalyptic western parable of loss and dubious redemption all rolled into a package with a far less complex wrapping. This book is one of those speculative novels that plants itself in the spaces between things and expands as you look deeper into the narrative.

Magdalena, our protagonist, is a child pulled by the whims of her father at the beginning, a trapped youth whose life we see through the eyes of another in the middle, and then a young woman worn by fate in the end. She is, and is not, the focus of the story, both a piece of the desert in which she wanders and something that falls outside of it. The desert, and the world outside of it, in which she lives has become something fetid and unknowable, something has happened to make everything change and turned its people into lost little caravans and posses driven to either pilgrimage and worship of impossible saints or a predatory existence built on taking advantage of others. Survival is not truly surviving here, and neither is death, the world never has enough and it will readily make monsters of those who grow unwary of its dangers.

This book was satisfying, with its doom and regret colored by rays of forbidden hope and terrible beauty it manages to be both gothic and surprisingly unusual. I highly recommend it to those who want something that takes its time to unravel while offering plenty of atmosphere and depth along the way.

This was not the usual post-apocalyptic world you usually read about. This was unique and I really enjoyed the way the author introduced us to this new world. I just couldn't relate to many of the characters because there is alot going on in this story. Overall, I still enjoyed the book and would read another story from this author.

This is a fascinating and fascinatingly weird blend of genres, with a cover to match. I'll be recommending this to a lot of folks.

Wow. Desert Creatures is a weird, freaky, super creative, and sensory novel. Weird horror like this is my favorite sub-genre, and I can only think of a very few other books that have been as odd and wonderful as this one.

First off, I live in Arizona, so the desert setting and themes was incredible to read and so well done. Chronister totally captures the bleakness and despair of arid, desolate, hot climates. Both the real aspects (characters, desert, society) and the unreal (monsters, toxicity, saints) were well written. She wrote a made-up world in that great way where the author dumps you right into it, letting the context build page by page--showing rather than telling.

I loved the themes of endurance, good vs evil vs gray, circumstances, faith, etc. I loved the stories the characters told interwoven through the book. I loved the changing POV. I loved everything about this book.

Thanks to Erewhon Books and NetGalley for a copy to read and review.

Kay Chronister has created a terrifying landscape of cancer-ridden creatures, poisonous plants, violent loners, and small groups held together with religious zeal, need and desperate hope, and a girl desperate for a miracle in Vegas to cure her club foot.

At the book's outset, Magdala and her father Xavier escape from their home and fall in with a group held together with inviolable rules, and death for breaking said rules. After an incident, Magdala, her father and a few others escape, but all die, leaving Magdala alone to survive somehow.

Years later, Magdala decides to take matters into her own hands, rather than wait for a miracle. She kidnaps a priest, Elam, who was exiled from Vegas years before, and the two travel to Vegas. Things go wrong, and eventually, Magdala must find another way to get what she needs.

The world Chronister's characters inhabit is harsh. It’s a nightmare of unpredictable, mutated, cancerous creatures, mad people and "stuffed men" who are infected by things in the desert, and people and animals born with mangled limbs, or afflicted by tumours ….there is nothing pretty in this broken world with its compromised climate,
minimal technology and a people believing in a variety of legends, myths and religion to explain the fall of civilization…..

Magdala must navigate one brutal situation after another in this incredibly dark story about an ugly world with little hope and sudden violence. It's a bleak story, but weirdly beautiful at the same time.

Thank you to Netgalley and Erewhon Books for this ARC in exchange for my review.