Booklist’s Review of Gideon Rex

Booklist received a preview copy of Gideon Rex and crafted its review of the novel based on this advance material.

There are books that entertain, and then there are books like Gideon Rex, which reach into the marrow of our current era and twist. In this hauntingly prescient dystopian tale, Philip Mazza offers a masterwork of tight, unflinching prose—where every word is necessary, every sentence is sharpened to a point. There is no excess here, only power.

Gideon Rex is a rare achievement: a dystopian thriller driven as much by the nuanced austerity of its language as by the terrifying relevance of its themes. The prose, flensed to the bone precise and pared, creating a relentless, hypnotic rhythm. Dialogue is swift and elliptical; descriptions evoke a sun-bleached wasteland where every detail—the blast of a desert wind, the soundless dread before a public rally—rings clear and unforgettable. The narrator withholds ornament, presenting each atrocity, each shimmer of hope, with the same uncompromising clarity. This restraint only intensifies the impact: brutality is never sensationalized, and moments of humanity, when they emerge, feel luminous and fleeting.

The world of Gideon Rex is viscerally imagined, yet never overdrawn. The food-based power structure—where sustenance is a currency controlled by a privileged few—anchors the setting in a tactile sense of deprivation and urgency. Stark’s inheritance of the Food Amalgam is more than a plot device; it’s the fulcrum upon which the entire society balances, and the engine driving the story’s propulsive tension. Every scene radiates out from this center, as villages barter for crumbs and cities teeter on the edge of starvation, willing to trade liberty for a steady ration.

But the novel is most remarkable in the breadth and subtlety of its thematic exploration. Tyranny, in Stark’s world, is not content to rule through violence alone. Instead, he orchestrates his rise through manipulative strategies reflective of real-world autocrats: he makes “the issue” (food, threat, hope) paramount; he recasts reality through official narratives and shadowy Echoers who shape discourse; and he seduces the masses into collective supplication. The transformation of Gideon from a wealthy inheritor to an adored, unassailable sovereign—the crowd’s “Salve Rex” thunderous at every rally—is rendered with chilling psychological realism.

These themes are not presented as abstract warnings but as living, breathing forces that pulse through the novel’s cast. Stark’s army of Silencers, Droppers, and Echoers are chilling in their functional banality: censors, propagandists, and enforcers who convert dissent to silence with clinical precision. The people—the real victims—are complexly drawn, neither purely innocent nor wholly complicit, but always vulnerable to the lure of order in chaos.

Throughout, the author juggles a host of motifs: corruption of power, appeal of populism, erosion of reality through propaganda, endurance and fragility of truth, collective psychology under oppression. Moments of tension are underscored by a meticulous attention to detail—grim processions in famine-stricken towns, the ceremonial pageantry of Gideon’s coronations, the subtle terror of a population chanting in unison. Yet, for all its bleakness, glimmers of resistance—moments where a character hesitates, questions, or remembers a freer past—break through the grayness, offering hope without sentimentality.

In sum, Gideon Rex is not only a timely political allegory but a feat of literary craft. Mazza’s language, as tightly controlled as the world they depict, amplifies the darkness at the novel’s core and the humanity still at its edges. Deeply unsettling and beautifully composed, it is a work that refuses to comfort, insisting instead on attention—and, perhaps, vigilance.

Highly recommended—though not for the faint of heart. This book unsettles, provokes, and leaves a long, echoing silence in its wake.