The Book of M opens on Orlando “Ory” Zhang scavenging for supplies and hunting for food in Arlington, Virginia. It is two years into the Forgetting, a worldwide epidemic that causes the shadows of symptomatic individuals to disappear and their memories to rapidly deteriorate. This inexplicable shadowless state somehow imbues those afflicted with supernatural abilities while also proving violent, and frequently fatal, for those impacted.

Ory and his wife Max have been sheltering in a hillside hotel since the day of their close friends’ wedding and the world’s collapse. They’d traveled from their apartment in D.C. especially for the occasion and were stranded in Arlington with the rest of the wedding party once reports of the Forgetting’s swift progression stateside hit the news. By the start of the novel, death and dispersal had already reduced their number to two. Ory and Max are doing their best to be resilient with their diminished resources and a semblance of routine. Though they find solace in each other, their lives are constrained to the confines of the hotel, and their losses only mount: Max’s shadow vanished seven days ago.

Max’s memory has remained mostly intact, though she’s started to forget small things like the color of a knife’s handle or that Ory now wears his wedding ring on a chain tucked inside his shirt to deter roaming bandits from stealing it. Max is afraid that the more these little details add up, the greater a risk she’ll be to herself and Ory. When Ory goes further out to the deserted downtown district of Arlington, Max takes the opportunity to leave their shelter. Taking only a few items, including a tape recorder to help her remember, Max heads south to New Orleans, where rumors of a possible cure are said to be. Ory is distraught when he discovers Max’s absence, fearing the worst but hoping that he can find her nearby or track her back to their D.C. home. The bulk of the novel traces their separate perilous journeys across a ravaged country and hangs on the promise of their eventual reunion and the prospect of a future post-Forgetting.

In addition to Ory and Max, the narrative shifts perspectives between two other characters: a Tehran-born and Boston-based Olympic archer named Mahnaz Ahmadi and an unnamed American man who developed retrograde amnesia after being injured in a car accident. There are temporal jumps between the present and flashbacks to life before the first recorded case in India and the first weeks/months of the global crisis. As Ory and Max advance in their cross-country treks and the tension intensifies, the secondary narrative threads centered on Mahnaz and the anonymous man begin to intersect with the main storylines in interesting ways.

With a post-apocalyptic setting, a mysterious illness with supernatural aspects, and four storylines to balance, there are points in The Book of M where the narrative pacing drags and the multiple moving parts tend to feel like a cacophony of side characters, conflicts, and subplots that don’t always cohere. However, the relationships between the core characters are strongly drawn, the mystery of how to treat or reverse the Forgetting is intriguing, and the resolution is surprising and poignant.

Like its contemporary Severance, parts of The Book of M’s descriptions of its fictional worldwide crisis resonate with the real-world experience of pandemic life, despite the novel predating the onset of COVID-19 by a year. Fans of the recent TV adaptations of The Last of Us and Fallout may find its comparable dystopian setting, dangerous journeys through ruined lands, and strong focus on character relationships appealing. Peng Shepherd grounds The Book of M’s supernatural premise and frenetic energy in human experiences and heart, producing a novel that is a well-observed and worthwhile read.

LOGLINE: In a post-apocalyptic world in which a global outbreak has raged for years and continues to inexplicably strip afflicted individuals of their shadows and memories, four survivors—a husband and wife separated by circumstance, an aspiring Olympic athlete, and a man injured in a car accident—fight to remember and live to find a cure.

MOOD: A backlist title from 2018 that presents a winding and suspenseful journey through a dystopian world that feels similar to Ling Ma’s Severance and the films It Comes at Night and 28 Days Later. Blending science fiction, literary, thriller, and fantasy elements and exploring themes that feel very apt for 2025, The Book of M leads readers through a near-constant state of upheaval that ultimately lands in an affecting and hopeful place.

TITLE: The Book of M

AUTHOR: Peng Shepherd

GENRE: Literary Fiction, Science Fiction, Thriller, Suspense, Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, Dystopian Fiction, Fantasy

PUB DATE: 5 June 2018

PUBLISHER: William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins 

LENGTH: 496 pages