Into the Mist

Into the Mist (2022) by P.C. Cast was an impulse Audible Daily Deal purchase that I thoroughly enjoyed. I loved the characters–teachers who are stranded across country during an apocalypse–and who need to deal with the awakening of strange powers and survival.

Mercury, Stella, and Imani are good friends leaving a teacher’s conference in Oregon, along with older Karen, when bombs hit most major cities and earthquakes are triggered. The bombs released a green Mist, which, when breathed by some women, cause special powers to awaken, but it turns men who breathe it into a puddle of goo, some instantly, and others slowly. Most vehicles’ electronics are fried, but older vehicles that weren’t running when the bombs hit can be salvaged. They quickly rescue Gemma, a teenager, and her mother, and find a doctor helping people at the lodge they had just left. But it’s clear that many, many people have died, including the families they all had left in either San Diego or Oklahoma.

Mercury is a pagan who becomes super-strong; Stella a twice-divorced 40-something whose intuition becomes imminently clear and imperative; grieving Imani becomes mother to all of the children they meet, and super-Christian Karen is able to see the spiritual in a way she never could before. Gemma is a healer and wise beyond her years. Together they journey through the forever-changed world, dodging the green Mist, and meeting friends and enemies, in their quest to build a new world. I loved the relationships and banter between the friends, and I cannot wait for the sequel that is coming in early August 2023, Out of the Dawn.

That being said, I took a quick peek at the Goodreads reviews, and my thoughts were not universal–it has been criticized for the dialogue, the failure to address how the Mist would affect trans or nonbinary people, and the author pushing her own liberal agenda. Since I happen to identify with what the author’s purported agenda is, that was part of why I loved it so much! But I agree that there is little queer representation, which could be improved, and there was some anti-fat bias in the author’s descriptions of Karen and of a couple male characters who succumbed to the Mist, perhaps because of their purported “unhealthiness” because of their body size.

Nevertheless, I was still hooked by the story and wanted more with these characters in this world.