Habitat

by Case Q. Kerns

Habitat invites us to witness a near-future dystopia filled with cloned animals, a sponsorship-based education system, and a subculture obsessed with body transplants as performance art—concluding 100 years in the future with a girl's post-apocalyptic quest to find her father.

In this novel told through linked narratives, a father embraces a grisly family tradition to help secure a better education for his daughter after a neighborhood barbecue. A young man crashes his family's meticulously planned annual gala to unveil his latest surgical transplant. Parents try to find a way to give their daughter the year's most sought-after Christmas gift—a clone of the canine star of a sci-fi television show.
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Combining body horror, science fiction, and poignant family drama, Habitat is a genre-bending and wholly original first novel.

Genres: Fiction

284 pages, Paperback

Published August 5, 2025

Reviews

[Abolfazl Nasri]

an original and thought-provoking debut:

Habitat offers a fresh and creative take on the near future, with vivid ideas and moments of quiet intensity. The themes of identity, body, and belonging are compelling, and the structure invites reflection.

That said, I personally found myself wishing for a bit more emotional depth and connection to the characters. While the concept is strong, the execution didn’t always resonate with me on a deeper level.

Still, I admire the ambition behind this book and the unique voice it brings. I'm curious to see what the author creates next.

[Lori]

DNFd at 43%

This is marketed as a novel, but it’s really a collection of short stories... loosely connected at best. I mean, I made it nearly halfway through, and so far only one story seemed to brush up against another.

The writing isn’t bad, and the stories themselves are fine. I just came in expecting a more cohesive narrative and ended up with something that felt more fragmented and abstract... a bit like Kawakami’s Under the Eye of the Big Bird, and not quite what I signed up for.

I was all in when I saw “body horror” and “dystopian sci-fi”, but what we're given is much tamer. Less visceral, more muted.

Not a bad book. Just not the book I thought I was getting.

[Sophie]

i really liked this kooky dystopia situation. i loved the bit at the end when all the stories came together. i loved all the animal stuff. overall a great time

[Ryan Luis]

I don’t think I’ve waffled on a rating this much in quite a while. I really liked the short stories but part 2 just didn’t feel like a satisfying way to utilize them idk. I wanted it to be a novel because the ideas were so good but it just wasn’t a novel and I was not satisfied. This would not stop me from reading another book from this author though. Really strong writing! The project as a whole just wasn’t for me.

[Cliff Watson]

I like the idea of this book as a complete narrative told through cascading short stories. I really enjoyed most of the first several chapters and was intrigued about its final destination the route it would take to get there. At some point, though, it fell apart for me. The arc reminded me of stories from writing workshops, where the first half of a work is workshopped and edited and workshopped and edited. Then...the writer realizes they've spent 4/5 of a semester on the first third of their work, so they rush to finish without any objective feedback or editing in order to hit their deadline.

[Scott Pomfret]

This linked series of dystopian interludes spans multiple generations and presents some of the darkest and most imaginatively twisted (and delightful) visions of the American (perhaps global) future I have ever read. The scenarios are nightmarish, but never outlandish, full of endless inventiveness concerning human cruelty, self-absorption and the hunger for connection. Two examples: (1) Armstrong (a TV character dog) is made available to the masses through both cloned and knock-off varieties so that every kid can have precisely the same dog; (2) a surgical center in which compelled donations of body parts (called "philanthropy") is used to fortify an army of persons made of grafted parts. Kerns never names the disaster or process that leads to this (these?) future, but there are hints of climate change throughout (and feral animals hunting humans) as well as a looming corporate presence (Phyla) that profits from the mess.

Thematically, though, this novel is focused as the title implies on the idea of habitat--what contributes to the world in which we thrive (or don't). In some ways, this exploration of habitat strikes a hopeful note: we are treated to visions of organic communities arising and ministering to the needs of their residents in a consensual way. But violent alternative habitats coexist with these more hopeful varietals, such that this is a dark, incisive, and thoughtful book.

A word on the prose: spare does not quiet capture it on account of the vividness of the images, but there is an economy of language here that is propulsive and delightful, in particular the final section of the novel in which a daughter is searching for her father, who has gone in search of medical treatments for her now dead mother. This section is impossible to interrupt; a housefire would not have compelled me to put it down.

Highly recommended.

[helen blake]

3.5. i adore the setting and wish i had a million short stories by kerns just to learn more about the world and how it works. i kept thinking about ishiguro (shocker) with the transplants and cloning, so i quite enjoyed that. i didn't want to be a geneticist for years for nothing! fictional companies like phyla will always get me. please kerns write more about your ambiguously (perhaps very) evil biotech corporation. in any case, i take off a star and a half because there were some things that were slightly distracting (editing choices) and i liked the first part far more than the second half, but i also think that part of that is just my taste! overall a great read!!!

[Mria Quijada]

I really got sucked into the first section of this book- laughed, cried, was already recommending it..
Part 2 was disappointing and seemed less original.

I think a lot of authors have an inclination to pull everything together at the end, but tidy endings ruin the magic for me.

[Amy Davin]

3.5. Really, really dug most of this, but the… magic, I guess? kinda killed it for me. Not sure why it was necessary.