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Killed for sport

Chris Flynn's dystopian new novel
by
April 2025, no. 474

Orpheus Nine by Chris Flynn

Hachette, $32.99 pb, 294 pp

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Killed for sport

Chris Flynn's dystopian new novel
by
April 2025, no. 474

Chris Flynn’s Orpheus Nine takes as its title the name given to the grisly mass death event that provides the novel’s premise and animates its plot. The event afflicts people across the globe at an identical moment and in an identical way, and its ill-fated victims are all children, specifically nine-year-olds. Curious already, owing to its scale and arbitrary application, this phenomenon proves all the stranger for what occurs immediately before these children finally succumb to its brutal consequences. Before their bodies swell and distort, before their organs fail due to an overload of sodium chloride, they sing, in angelic chorus, a Latin translation of a verse from King Lear: ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; / They kill us for their sport.’

Orpheus Nine

Orpheus Nine

by Chris Flynn

Hachette, $32.99 pb, 294 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

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