Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A post-apocalypticand pre-apocalypticdebut. It's 2011, if not quite the 2011 you remember. Candace Chen is a millennial living in Manhattan. She doesn't love her job as a production assistantshe helps publishers make specialty Biblesbut it's a steady paycheck. Her boyfriend wants to leave the city and his own mindless job. She doesn't go with him, so she's in the city when Shen Fever strikes. Victims don't die immediately. Instead, they slide into a mechanical existence in which they repeat the same mundane actions over and over. These zombies aren't out hunting humans; instead, they perform a single habit from life until their bodies fall apart. Retail workers fold and refold T-shirts. Women set the table for dinner over and over again. A handful of people seem to be immune, though, and Candace joins a group of survivors. The connection between existence before the End and during the time that comes after is not hard to see. The fevered aren't all that different from the factory workers who produce Bibles for Candace's company. Indeed, one of the projects she works on almost falls apart because it proves hard to source cheap semiprecious stones; Candace is only able to complete the contract because she finds a Chinese company that doesn't mind too much if its workers die from lung disease. This a biting indictment of late-stage capitalism and a chilling vision of what comes after, but that doesn't mean it's a Marxist screed or a dry Hobbesian thought experiment. This is Ma's first novel, but her fiction has appeared in distinguished journals, and she won a prize for a chapter of this book. She knows her craft, and it shows. Candace is great, a wonderful mix of vulnerability, wry humor, and steely strength. She's sufficiently self-aware to see the parallels between her life before the End and the pathology of Shen Fever. Ma also offers lovely meditations on memory and the immigrant experience. Smart, funny, humane, and superbly well-written. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly
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In this shrewd postapocalyptic debut, Ma imagines the end times in the world of late capitalism, marked by comforting, debilitating effects of nostalgia on its characters. The world has succumbed to Shen Fever, a "disease of remembering" that renders its victims zombie-like, doomed to "[mimic] old routines and gestures they must have inhabited for years." The affected aren't dangerous, just disturbingly similar to the living in their slavish devotion to habit. The narrator, Candace Chen, works at a specialty Manhattan book publisher, overseeing the printing of specialty Bibles, "the purest form of product packaging, the same content repackaged a million times over." Most of the production takes place in China, the source of the fever and Candace's birthplace. She narrates the swift spread of the fungal infection, which begins to ravage the city as she struggles, like many young New Yorkers, with whether she should pursue her artistic passion (photography) or commit to her corporate job. The novel alternates between Candace's vivid descriptions of increasingly plague-ridden, deserted New York and her eventual pilgrimage to an Illinois shopping mall with a band of survivors, whose leader is a menacing former IT specialist. There are some suspense elements, but the novel's strength lies in Ma's accomplished handling of the walking dead conceit to reflect on what constitutes the good life. This is a clever and dextrous debut. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

*Starred Review* With apocalyptic fiction having become so popular a genre, how does one approach it with originality, avoiding the too-familiar reference points? Embracing the genre but somehow transcending it, Ma creates a truly engrossing and believable anti-utopian world. Ma's cause for civilization's collapse is a pandemic. Shen Fever spreads through fungal spores, causing its victims to lethargically repeat menial tasks, ignoring all external stimuli, including the need for sustenance. Prognosis is terminal. Candace Chen, a rare survivor of the outbreak, blogs anonymously as NY Ghost on a slowly disintegrating internet, capturing the horror of what has happened in her photographs of an empty New York City, where she lived when the fevered started dying. The narrative flashes back to Candace's life before the end, working for a book-manufacturing company in the Bibles department; spending free time watching movies with her on-and-off boyfriend, Jonathan; and longing for the seemingly fulfilled lives of other millennials her age. Candace's story also crosses that of a group led by a former IT specialist named Bob, who seems to be suffering from a messiah complex. Ma's extraordinary debut marks a notable creative jump by playing on the apocalyptic fears many people share today, as we live in these very interesting times. Pair Severance with Adam Sternbergh's similarly disturbing Shovel Ready (2014).--Ruzicka, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist

Library Journal
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DEBUT Candace Chen arrives in New York City postcollege because "it seemed like the inevitable, default place to go." After a summer of wandering Manhattan wearing her dead mother's dresses-taking pictures and getting picked up-she unexpectedly falls into a publishing job. She settles into a Brooklyn apartment, finds a freespirited boyfriend, and five years pass. Then Shen Fever hits, rapidly spreading gruesome death across the globe. Candace inexplicably remains immune. The city empties, becoming the "NY Ghost" Candace ironically named her photo blog in more vibrant times. On the final day of her work contract, she commandeers a yellow cab as far as Pennsylvania, where she becomes the ninth-and last-member of a motley crew who might be the only survivors. Their destination: "the Facility." The end looms but Candace is, well, just beginning. Debut author Ma, who won the 2015 Graywolf SLS Prize for best novel excerpt with a chapter from this book, presents a smart, searing exposé on the perils of consumerism, Google overload, and millennial malaise. Verdict With womb dystopia a hot topic inspired by the renewed popularity of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, an already established audience will be eager to discover this work. [See Prepub Alert, 2/11/18.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.