The Megarothke

February 26, 2018
Ashcroft takes posthumanism to a sinister place in an intense debut set in an ominous and suspenseful postapocalyptic hellscape. In 2044, orbital weapons rained down planetary devastation during the Hollow War. Seven years later, only 50,000 people are left in Los Angeles. Theo Adams, a guilt-ridden and despondent former LAPD cop, fights the Scourge—patchwork creatures that are part AI and part monster—led by the mastermind called the Recluse. The Recluse also created the Megarothke, a multidimensional god whose followers, the cult of the Trans-Sentients, are on a mission to punish humankind for its violence and self-indulgence. Theo failed to stop the Trans-Sentients when they began modifying human DNA with nanotechnology, creating the progenitors of the Scourge; he blames himself and is determined to make amends. When the Recluse demands 100 humans per month as sacrifices, Theo and a ragtag band of soldiers descend into tunnels under L.A. to confront the Megarothke and his fiends. Ashcroft’s novel builds a strong sense of dread into a gritty condemnation of playing god, and it’s perfect for fans of the creepy and philosophical.

January 15, 2018
An augmented soldier fights against apocalyptic nightmares in a brutal war to save humanity.Debut novelist Ashcroft unleashes a witch's brew of macabre, Lovecraft-ian imagery in this strange horror novel that couches a heavy emotional arc within its video game-like setting. Our narrator is former LAPD officer-turned-cybernetic survivor Theo Adams circa 2051, in the last days of the human race. Seven years earlier a "Hollow War" decimated Earth's population with rail guns and viruses before unleashing the terrifying creatures of the Harvest, known to survivors as the Scourge: "The fiends, bruisers, tender-monkeys, huddlers, snatch rats, cabritas. Rape, slaughter, feast. You don't need to be reminded in detail. You got organized. You got weapons and established perimeters." Now some 50,000 scarred survivors remain in the Santa Monica Collective, a ragtag, militarized band of soldiers barely winning skirmishes with the monsters they face. On one side of this conflict there is the Megarothke, the unstoppable, spiderlike killing machine who leads the Scourge, aided by a human quisling called The Recluse. On the other, the Orbital, a desperate but well-armed group of survivors who have fled to orbit but yearn to return to Earth. In flashbacks, Theo takes us back 10 years to his troubled, soon-to-end marriage, whose only saving grace is his daughter, Amelie. The situation is made worse when his ex becomes entangled with a cult called the Trans-Sentience movement, where a splinter faction wants to use a kind of sorcery to summon a powerful demon called the Lightbringer. It's some heavy mythology-building but Ashcroft's skillful blend of noir vocabulary and cyberpunk aesthetics work to its advantage. Between its robotic doppelgangers, mutated monsters, and actual ray guns, the book manages to take a hard look at what it means to be human in an age when humanity barely remains.A bloody, blistering novel of war and sacrifice set in a time of actual monsters.

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