Set on an inhospitable future earth, Maria Takolander’s The End of Romance is a violent dystopia – and it’s relatable.

Life is hard here. Humanity clusters in degraded urban settlements, scrounging off what’s left of the old world. The planet’s sick of us, has been made sick by us. Nothing grows except cacti and the air is poisoned by a fog that behaves, sometimes, like it might be sentient.

The only hope for survival is a distant planet known as the Promised Land. An interstellar colonial war is being waged to claim it, every healthy boy forcibly recruited to its cause.

The End of Romance – Maria Takolander (Text Publishing)

The woman (named Marianna – but names are rare in this book) lives with her son at the edge of town. Taught how to survive by the Captain, one of her mother’s terrible men, the woman is self-reliant and implacable.

She has grown up in a world where violence is the norm and death is something you see every day. The only chink in her armour is her son, old enough to have started military school, but not yet sent away. She knows it’s only a matter of time.

One day, while scavenging, the woman encounters a man, Josif. Young, healthy, he seems to have escaped his fate. Desperate to save her son, the woman demands he take them to the monastery........

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