FKA USA, Reed King
FKA USA, Reed King
List: $32.99 | Sale: $23.10
Club: $16.49

FKA USA
A Novel

Author: Reed King

Narrator: Dan Bittner, Peter Ganim

Unabridged: 15 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/18/2019


Synopsis

"An epically concocted apocalyptic vision of America in all its faded glory." — Kirkus

"...a visionary head-trip of apocalyptic political satire; a kitchen sink quest story that reads like someone's high school RPG session gone full-on Technicolor bonkers.” — NPR.org

Reed King’s amazingly audacious audiobook is something of a cross between L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, Douglas Adams’s A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.

In Reed King’s wildly imaginative and possibly prescient debut, the United States has dissolved in the wake of environmental disasters and the catastrophic policies of its final president.

It is 2085, and Truckee Wallace, a factory worker in Crunchtown 407 (formerly Little Rock, Arkansas, before the secessions), has no grand ambitions besides maybe, possibly, losing his virginity someday.

But when Truckee is thrust unexpectedly into the spotlight he is tapped by the President for a sensitive political mission: to deliver a talking goat across the continent. The fate of the world depends upon it.

The problem is—Truckee’s not sure it’s worth it.

Joined on the road by an android who wants to be human and a former convict lobotomized in Texas, Truckee will navigate an environmentally depleted and lawless continent with devastating—and hilarious—parallels to our own, dodging body pickers and Elvis-worshippers and logo girls, body subbers, and VR addicts.

Elvis-willing, he may even lose his virginity.

FKA USA is the epic audiobook we’ve all been waiting for about the American end of times, with its unavoidable sense of being on the wrong end of the roller coaster ride. It is a masterwork of ambition, humor, and satire with the power to make us cry, despair, and laugh out loud all at once. It is a tour de force unlike anything else you will listen to this year.

About Dan Bittner

Dan Bittner has narrated dozens of audio books and has starred on stage and on the screen, in movies such as Men in Black, Adventureland, and the Producers: The Movie Musical. He has also appeared onstage as Macbeth Malcolm and Sherlock Holmes in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He has narrated popular audio books such as The Eleventh Plague, Hero, and Forever.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ashley on January 30, 2019

Had it not been for the free ARC I received from NetGalley, I would most likely not have finished this book. The overall story arc was a typical quest story. But the incessant use of lingo from the dystopian future was too much. And while the footnotes, which I generally like in a book, were so intr......more

Goodreads review by Bandit on January 22, 2019

I’m always up for a dystopia, but had I been aware of this one’s voluminous page count, not sure I would have read it. Conciseness…I’m a huge fan of conciseness, precision, succinctness, just a basic ability to tell a story in, say, 300 pages. 400 if you must. Going close to 500 is seldom justified......more

Goodreads review by Mindi on August 21, 2019

I saw this book a number of times before I realized that my friend Audra @ouija.doodle.reads was reading it. She said it had footnotes and was hilarious and I immediately knew this was one that I needed to read. Then I read the synopsis on the inside cover and it said it was a cross between THE HITC......more

Goodreads review by Gerhard on September 20, 2019

Review to follow... This was the literary equivalent of a Michael Bay movie. Directed by Jerry Bruckheimer.......more

Goodreads review by Sydney on April 23, 2020

Thank you to Flatiron Books for the ARC! “How would you like to save the world, son?” FKA USA is a wild ride. If you’re tired of reading the same old formulaic dystopian novel, this is the book for you. There are some tropes, such as the evil government/corporations stuff, but it's done in a way th......more