Bats of the Republic is an illuminated novel of adventure, featuring hand-drawn maps and natural history illustrations, subversive pamphlets and science-fictional diagrams, and even a nineteenth-century novel-within-a-novel—an intrigue wrapped in innovative design.
In 1843, fragile naturalist Zadock Thomas must leave his beloved in Chicago to deliver a secret letter to an infamous general on the front lines of the war over Texas. The fate of the volatile republic, along with Zadock’s future, depends on his mission. When a cloud of bats leads him off the trail, he happens upon something impossible...
Three hundred years later, the world has collapsed and the remnants of humanity cling to a strange society of paranoia. Zeke Thomas has inherited a sealed envelope from his grandfather, an esteemed senator. When that letter goes missing, Zeke engages a fomenting rebellion that could free him—if it doesn’t destroy his relationship, his family legacy, and the entire republic first.
As their stories overlap and history itself begins to unravel, a war in time erupts between a lost civilization, a forgotten future, and the chaos of the wild. Bats of the Republic is a masterful novel of adventure and science fiction, of elliptical history and dystopian struggle, and, at its riveting core, of love.
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In a world where the Powers That Be have deemed any and all secrets illegal, Zeke Thomas must go against the flow he's always followed when he inherits a sealed envelope containing information which could sink the system that's kept humanity alive since the Collapse.
Meanwhile, in the year 1843, Zeke's time-removed relative, Zadock, has to leave his one true love languishing in her sickbed to deliver a highly sensitive letter to a legendary general embedded deep in the disputed territory of Texas.
An incredibly presented "illuminated novel" which, like last year's S., blends form and function with history and mystery to realise a reading experience that amazes from the first page, Bats of the Republic comes from the co-founder of a small press specialising in "strange and beautiful fiction and nonfiction" with a sideline in detail-oriented design, so the unusual shape Zachary Thomas Dodson's debut takes shouldn't be such a surprise.
And yet, the metatextual elements that make this reflexive narrative remarkable are so utterly abundant that they create a state of fantastic stupefaction. In advance of the actual start of the story, we're treated to an exquisite endpaper mosaic, two discrete family trees, a meticulous map charting Zadock's ill-fated flight, a selection of handwritten letters, the first of a few newspaper clippings, and the title page of a whole other novel, namely The City-State by E. Anderson—all of which is as good as guaranteed to make one go um.
And Bats of the Republic has hardly even begun!