The Orange Eats Creeps

A posse of ravenous teenagers rampages through Krilanovich's slyly arch debut, devouring and destroying everything unfortunate enough to be in its path. Creatures of enormous appetites for sex and food and diversion, they're 100% id and described by the unnamed female narrator as "Slutty Teenage Hobo Vampire Junkies," though their vampire bona fides are a matter of question. The story careens from encounter to encounter, bursting into vibrant tableaus of images and barrages of prickly observations ("Death is sewing a calico dress next to a fire in the ground. Do you dare approach her, little boy?") that, for a while, stand in for plot. As they accumulate, a pattern emerges of a relatively ordinary life rocked by unspecified cataclysmic events—probably war—while, in her roaming, the heroine intermittently searches for and laments the loss of a surrogate sister named Kim until a final confrontation with a warlock brings closure to the story, even as it raises more questions. Krilanovich's postmodern mashup is refreshingly piquant and playful, reminiscent of postmodern Euro fiction and full of poison pill observations. (Sept.)