“Dazzling and emotionally wrought . . . Jensen presents a brilliantly realized vision and a startling warning of what the world could become.” -Booklist (starred review)
Five punks with nothing to lose skateboard across a climate-ravaged and ultra-authoritarian America, desperate for meaning and determined to face the apocalypse on their own terms in this prescient literary debut, for readers of American War and Chain-Gang All-Stars.
In the year 2054, everything moves…at least those who are smart. The rest of the world, knowing it’s too late to do anything about the climate’s destruction, has closed its eyes. There was realization and panic and war; now there is only waiting around for the end. Born into this time of nihilistic lethargy and endgame capitalism, five skater kids in El Paso become obsessed with a viral movement called No Choice: punks across the nation banding together at the California coastline, ready to greet doomsday when it comes.
They have little to leave behind and much to escape. For Yol, her family’s poverty in the climate-refugee tenements. For white boy Sunshine, his dad’s buffalo cloning farm, and for corporate daughter Gabby her arranged marriage and unbearable grandmother. For Iggy, kicked out by his mom, the choice to leave is simple. But the real reason is Ariel: a skating genius and magnetic beauty on the verge of fame, and with whom each of them, in their own way, is in love.
There are three gates to pass through: First, the border into the west, militarized and highly controlled since the nation fractured into Zones. After that, the Flood engulfing southern Arizona, the water lifeless, scorched, and crawling with inland pirates. Finally, California, its burning wilderness and megacities like false jewels between the skaters and their destination.
As their journey puts them at greater and greater risk, the skaters’ faith—in each other, in No Choice, and in Ariel—is tested. Ariel himself is unshaken, a vector pointing west to glory, dignity, and maybe even revenge for inheriting a ruined world. They just have to survive long enough to take it. A saga told in page-turning episodes, March of the War Priests is a speculative odyssey for our new era and whatever lies beyond.
