Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time
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When Satire Isn’t

Severance by Ling Ma

May 18, 2026 by G.D. Giant Leave a Comment

I wonder what it was like to read this book pre-COVID. Because I can tell you that reading it now, six years after COVID hit, it’s not as satirical as perhaps the author intended. In Severance, the deadly virus definitively originates in China and makes sort-of zombies (not the brain-eating kind) from the infected. Other than that difference, this book is spookily prescient. So much so that I had to keep re-checking the original publication date, but, yeah, Severance was first published in August of […]

Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: adult fiction, dark humor, end of times, immigrant stories, Ling Ma, NYC, Satire

G.D. Giant's CBR18 Review No:9 · Genres: Fiction · Tags: adult fiction, dark humor, end of times, immigrant stories, Ling Ma, NYC, Satire ·
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