A Tidy Armageddon

The world is transformed into what looks like a massive warehouse overnight, and the results is a suspenseful and action-rich tale as humanity is forced to face the scale of its consumption The world is utterly transformed: every product of human creation has been organized by an unknown hand into a vast grid of nine-story blocks, each comprised of a single item type: watering cans, lighthouses, fake Christmas trees, helicopters, plastic spoons, and everything else Earth's culture and technology have ever produced, stacked in homogenous towers and separated by a maze of passageways. Navigating this depopulated environment, a small contingent of diverse soldiers tries to make sense of this enigmatic apocalypse while desperately searching for survivors. They are led by Elsie Sharpcot, a Cree woman who has endured the military's rampant racism and misogyny, and Dorian Wakely, her PTSD-afflicted second-in-command. Both veterans of the war in Afghanistan, they lead a group of army misfits while they all struggle - against the elements and each other - to survive. Passing with fear and wonder through this museum of human achievement, provisioning themselves from its resources, the group races to outrun the approaching winter and find a home. After emerging from a bunker, Sergeant Elsie Sharpcot, a shrewd war vet, and her PTSD-afflicted second in command, Dorian Wakely, must lead a group of six soldiers through a world in which all products of human creation have been arranged by an unknown hand into a vast grid resembling an outdoor warehouse. BH Panhuyzen, an author of two previous novels and a collection of stories, lives in Toronto with three humans, a dog, and a cat, plus works as an independent software developer. BH fears that all this personal recycling, squishing every cereal box and milk carton, might not be working. "Samuel Beckett meets Stephen King in an absurd and eerie coming-of-end tale that should serve as some sort of warning (but probably won't)." - Peter Darbyshire, author of Has the World Ended Yet? "A Tidy Armageddon is a gorgeous, provocative, pitch-perfect conceptual art piece in the literary lineage of Tom McCarthy's Remainder and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I was immersed from the first page into a world resembling an enormous and very organized megastore, where capitalism's last breath chastened and delighted me. Had God's hand rearranged all the things just so, or was it an advanced alien civilization? No, it was BH Panhuyzen in passionate authority presenting me with the end of the world in a way never before imagined. Unforgettable. " - Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, author of All the Broken Things and Wait Softly Brother Sales and Market Bullets - A MASH-UP OF CORMAC MCCARTHY'S THE ROAD AND EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL'S STATION ELEVEN: While this novel's cataclysm contrasts with the scorched world depicted in The Road, it is similarly written in intense, graphic prose, featuring an unusual and arresting environment and gripping tension and action. Reminiscent of Station Eleven, it includes strong female characters, and an emotionally rich story of friendship, love, and loss. - DYSTOPIA: The novel depicts an apocalypse unlike any other, and while apparently less chaotic than the stock tropes - nuclear holocaust, meteor strike, alien invasion, pandemic, zombie outbreak - it is no less devastating. Audience - For readers of Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven - Readers of sci-fi and literary dystopian fiction - Fans of the TV show (and book) The Leftovers