Review by Booklist Review
In a fictional yet eerily familiar near future, a food shortage has led to a rise in so-called ""filtering"" syndicates in south Texas, which kidnap scientists to produce artificial food and operate much like ruthless, real-life narcotics cartels. At the same time, Mexico's massive Olmec heads begin to disappear, and the Trufflepig, an otherworldly creature thought to exist only in ancient myth, shows up at an exclusive dinner party. At the center of this busy nexus is Esteban Bellacosa, a longtime resident of MacArthur, Texas, who lost his wife and child to the famine and who has kept his head down ever since to fly under the syndicates' radar. Bellacosa is quickly drawn into the drama when his brother, Oswaldo, appears unexpectedly with his mouth stitched shut with huarango thorns. Packed with other striking images and clever details, like the three canyon-sized concrete barriers that separate the U.S. from Mexico (and still fail to curb migration), this wildly imaginative, highly addicting, and ultimately endearing speculative first novel offers borderlands storytelling with an sf twist.--Diego Báez Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A near-future picaresque of genetic manipulation, indigenous legend, and organized crime on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, Flores's delirious debut never quite delivers on its imaginative premise. Bellacosa, a freelance South Texas construction equipment locator, gets drafted by journalist Paco Herbert to attend an "underground dinner" where wealthy invitees eat extinct animals that have been recreated through the process of "filtering." Among the living amusements is a Trufflepig, a "piglike reptile" central to the mythology of the (fictional) Aranaña tribe. Once home, Bellacosa is greeted by his brother, who has just escaped a Mexican syndicate attempting to shrink his head and sell it as an Aranaña artifact. Bellacosa himself is soon kidnapped by a crooked border patrolman and, in the sequence leading to the story's conclusion, hooked with electrodes to a Trufflepig that transforms his psyche into "the memory of all living things." Flores's novel is jam-packed with excitement, but his inability to prioritize his ideas prevents them from cohering into a credible vision of dystopia. Despite this, Flores's novel shows he has talent and creativity to spare. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Esteban Bellacosa, like many in the south Texas border town of MacArthur, makes a tenuous living by hustling deals and facilitating cross-border business schemes. The legalization of all drugs, a burgeoning trade in once-extinct animal species (-resurrected by a process known as filtering), and Mexico's catastrophic economic collapse have created a situation far removed from his former life as a small-business owner and family man. Esteban's wife and daughter are dead, his dentist brother Oswaldo has been kidnapped, and his daily social interactions are often limited to banter with the always-changing crew of waitresses at his favorite diner. So when journalist acquaintance Paco Herbert invites him to a mysterious, invitation-only dinner party featuring filtered animals, he decides to go, setting off events that push them even deeper into the violent mysteries along the border. The political reality of our present is all too easily recognized in this version of the future. -VERDICT Austinite writer/bookseller Flores has created a nightmarish if fascinating vision of a borderland of multiple, parallel walls; designer genetic experimentation; and grisly violence-all dabbed liberally with folkloric strokes. For fans of magical realism and near-future settings, e.g., Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, and of Hunter S. Thompson's psychedelic energy.-Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A widower just trying to get by on the Mexican border wanders into a surreal underground obsessed with reviving extinct creatures.Almost nobody in the business does weird fiction like FSG Originals, and this curious debut novel by Flores (Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, 2018), set in an alternative near future, certainly deserves its place alongside Warren Ellis and Jeff Vandermeer, with a rustic patina that nods to the likes of Jonathan Lethem's well-worn detectives. The main character, Esteban Bellacosa, isn't a detective exactly but more like a fixer, the guy who can get you things or get things done. Unlike his troubled brother, Oswaldo, he was born north of the border, giving him the ability and advantage of moving seamlessly between Mexico and the city of MacArthur in South Texas. He's also something of a broken man whose daughter died during a food shortage and whose wife died shortly thereafter of grief. In a bizarre backstory, a now-deceased Mexican cartel leader kidnapped a bunch of scientists during the food shortage and forced them to use a scientific process called "filtering""the artificial production of an organic substance"to bring a bunch of weird animals back from extinction so the cartel could farm them out to either collectors or food markets. After Bellacosa is recruited by investigative reporter Paco Herbert to infiltrate an illegal underground dinner serving some of the oddest of filtered animals (Galapagos Gumbo, anyone?), he's inadvertently driven by the cartel into a peyote-fueled journey in pursuit of the titular Trufflepig, an equally unlikely creature worshiped by a local native tribe. Plotwise, the novel is seriously circuitous, but Flores' rich characterizations, sparing prose, and vivid portrayal of the myths of Mexican culture and life along the border give what could have been a tinder-dry crime novel a strange whimsy and charm that don't sound like anything else in genre fiction.A dryly philosophical, colorful, and disorienting thriller about grief, survival, and undead animals. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
