What do you think?
Rate this book
Ultimart
“The digital sun rises in a television sky.“
In the Ultimart Dome, over twenty million people are born, live, and die without ever stepping foot outside, without breathing a single lungful of fresh air, or even seeing the real sun. They see a fake television sky over artificial grass, plastic trees, toilet-blue water, crammed with colorful, decaying malls and corporate serfdom. At the center of it all is The Dream, the suburban fantasy of comfort and plenty nestled in the exclusive core of the Ultimart Dome.
Corwin Scaggs suffers through a precarious living in a low-level AI advertising firm, surviving in a rented box with his wife and young son. He’s surviving the four hours of sleep everyone’s allowed each night, the yearly Black Friday massacres, the brutality of Ultimart Security, and the constant barrage of mindless pop culture and social media insanity. His family lives on the razor’s edge of “bankruptcy”, a one-way ticket to corporate slavery in its enormous underground factories.
That is, until a fateful meeting with a dangerous woman upends his life and sends him hurtling towards a dangerous truth about the Dome. Something he can’t believe. Something he can no longer ignore.
Praise for
“Carl Wilhoyte dazzles with ULTIMART, his debut novel. Wilhoyte’s exploration of society, of grief and love, of life and death, star in this dystopian tale of one person’s journey toward a better existence, toward amenable survival. The stark nonchalance and dark humor make this a novel for our times, a contemporary feast that shouldn’t be missed.”
– Michael Czyzniejewski, author of THE AMNESIAC IN THE MAZE, STORIES
“A Faustian tale... Wilhoyte’s sharp satire of a man trying to rise in a horrific future world filled with dead ends and bad choices illuminates the excesses of our own world. A compelling read.”
– Lawrence Coates, author of CAMP OLVIDO
(Paperback, 410 pages)
In the Ultimart Dome, over twenty million people are born, live, and die without ever stepping foot outside, without breathing a single lungful of fresh air, or even seeing the real sun. They see a fake television sky over artificial grass, plastic trees, toilet-blue water, crammed with colorful, decaying malls and corporate serfdom. At the center of it all is The Dream, the suburban fantasy of comfort and plenty nestled in the exclusive core of the Ultimart Dome.
Corwin Scaggs suffers through a precarious living in a low-level AI advertising firm, surviving in a rented box with his wife and young son. He’s surviving the four hours of sleep everyone’s allowed each night, the yearly Black Friday massacres, the brutality of Ultimart Security, and the constant barrage of mindless pop culture and social media insanity. His family lives on the razor’s edge of “bankruptcy”, a one-way ticket to corporate slavery in its enormous underground factories.
That is, until a fateful meeting with a dangerous woman upends his life and sends him hurtling towards a dangerous truth about the Dome. Something he can’t believe. Something he can no longer ignore.
Praise for
“Carl Wilhoyte dazzles with ULTIMART, his debut novel. Wilhoyte’s exploration of society, of grief and love, of life and death, star in this dystopian tale of one person’s journey toward a better existence, toward amenable survival. The stark nonchalance and dark humor make this a novel for our times, a contemporary feast that shouldn’t be missed.”
– Michael Czyzniejewski, author of THE AMNESIAC IN THE MAZE, STORIES
“A Faustian tale... Wilhoyte’s sharp satire of a man trying to rise in a horrific future world filled with dead ends and bad choices illuminates the excesses of our own world. A compelling read.”
– Lawrence Coates, author of CAMP OLVIDO
(Paperback, 410 pages)
410 pages, Paperback
Published April 23, 2025
1 person is currently reading
19 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 30, 2025
Rating:⭐️⭐️.5
Ultimart is an immersive, claustrophobic dive into a future of consumer captivity and corporate control. Wilhoyte paints the Ultimart Dome in painstaking detail. There is no shortage of explanation about how this world functions and just how bleak life within it truly is. The commitment to worldbuilding is impressive, though at times it felt almost overwhelming. Corwin, the narrator, explains not only the futuristic aspects of his society but also things that are ordinary to us, like grass or gardening. While I understood this was likely meant to highlight how drastically the world has changed, it did start to feel like too much exposition.
The first half of the book is slow, weighed down by these constant explanations, but I found Corwin himself to be a strong and relatable protagonist. Even within this exaggerated capitalist nightmare, his struggles and worries feel familiar, and I think that’s where the book shines most. The premise itself is both amazing and disturbingly believable, especially as an American.
When the action does kick in, it picks up quickly... perhaps too quickly. The pace shifts into a whirlwind of events, characters appear and disappear, and it can become difficult to keep track of everything happening. That said, there are flashes of dark humor scattered throughout, which provide surprising moments of levity against such a grim backdrop.
Overall, Ultimart has a sickeningly relatable core idea, one that sticks with you. While I struggled with the density of the worldbuilding and the chaotic pacing, I can appreciate the ambition behind it.
Thank you to Ripped Pages LLC and Carl Wilhoyte for this copy. All opinions are my own.
Ultimart is an immersive, claustrophobic dive into a future of consumer captivity and corporate control. Wilhoyte paints the Ultimart Dome in painstaking detail. There is no shortage of explanation about how this world functions and just how bleak life within it truly is. The commitment to worldbuilding is impressive, though at times it felt almost overwhelming. Corwin, the narrator, explains not only the futuristic aspects of his society but also things that are ordinary to us, like grass or gardening. While I understood this was likely meant to highlight how drastically the world has changed, it did start to feel like too much exposition.
The first half of the book is slow, weighed down by these constant explanations, but I found Corwin himself to be a strong and relatable protagonist. Even within this exaggerated capitalist nightmare, his struggles and worries feel familiar, and I think that’s where the book shines most. The premise itself is both amazing and disturbingly believable, especially as an American.
When the action does kick in, it picks up quickly... perhaps too quickly. The pace shifts into a whirlwind of events, characters appear and disappear, and it can become difficult to keep track of everything happening. That said, there are flashes of dark humor scattered throughout, which provide surprising moments of levity against such a grim backdrop.
Overall, Ultimart has a sickeningly relatable core idea, one that sticks with you. While I struggled with the density of the worldbuilding and the chaotic pacing, I can appreciate the ambition behind it.
Thank you to Ripped Pages LLC and Carl Wilhoyte for this copy. All opinions are my own.
July 17, 2025
Nineteen-Eighty-Four meets The Truman Show ... but either poorly structured, making it difficult to follow, or just too high brow for me.
I want to go for the latter, overall, as I never want to demean a book. Perhaps this is another situation where my literal thinking proved an obstacle. Without speaking to other readers of this book, that may have to remain a mystery to me.
Anyway, enough of that; time to get into the actual review of what I did understand.
Ultimart is a dystopian novel, set in a capitalist nightmare enclosed by a dome. There's a chilling prescience to the story that captures what much of the best sci-fi does so well: taking the world we live in and exaggerating it without ever stepping into the impossible. Oh yes, this is a reality we could easily end up living in.
The world building is perhaps where this novel is at its strongest, in my eyes at least. We're given a clear vision of this unreal world; a setting that verges of the Cyberpunk, although with less of the Cyber ... and not much of the punk, actually, but it captures the neon-drenched locale where advertising is impossible to escape. That was my interpretation, at least. Everything has a cost, characters' lives revolving around their Number (which I could only assume relates to their bank account and/or credit score). It's a twisted reflection of our world.
I did feel that the story took a little while to get going, and that the first hundred pages or so were more akin to a tour of this world, albeit from the perspective of someone struggling through it, which attaches you to him. In fact, he starts off likeable; someone just trying to get by.
When the story picks up, though, the protagonist becomes somewhat unpleasant. There are events that trigger this change, yes, and I interpret it as a reflection of how the world twists us into horrible caricatures of ourselves just to get by, but it can be hard to stick by a character who changes like this. He makes some choices — or has choices thrust upon him — that feel borderline reprehensible, and the way he treats some people feels unnecessary. There are even a couple of character relationships that felt like they switched around quite jarringly.
And, on the subject of jarring, I did find the structure difficult at times. It seemed we were bouncing from event to event, with little breathing room between or, in some places, a slight lack of set-up. I remember a few times ending up in locations with characters feeling like I was supposed to know who they were, but I didn't.
I also think the final few chapters went somewhat over my head. I won't spoil it here, but it somewhat felt like a lot of stuff happened without going anywhere ... which, again, was maybe the point, but I didn't entirely follow what was going on. One second characters are saying one thing, acting a certain way, the next they're saying another and seemingly acting like the previous "attitude" never happened.
Again, I want to assume I was just struggling to keep up. There was a lot of financial jargon at times, and other "business-y" talk, that if I'd grasped may have made it all make more sense. I will say that the jump-jump-jump between scenes and events contributed to my struggles, though. I would have liked some more obvious connective threads.
Still, this is a good book (3 stars = good), with a prophetic and satirical quality. It's dark, so don't pick it up expecting a "happy ending" in the literal sense of the phrase. If nothing else, I'll recommend a read so that you can tell me whether I just haven't grasped the deeper themes adequately, or whether the story is actually hard to follow.
I want to go for the latter, overall, as I never want to demean a book. Perhaps this is another situation where my literal thinking proved an obstacle. Without speaking to other readers of this book, that may have to remain a mystery to me.
Anyway, enough of that; time to get into the actual review of what I did understand.
Ultimart is a dystopian novel, set in a capitalist nightmare enclosed by a dome. There's a chilling prescience to the story that captures what much of the best sci-fi does so well: taking the world we live in and exaggerating it without ever stepping into the impossible. Oh yes, this is a reality we could easily end up living in.
The world building is perhaps where this novel is at its strongest, in my eyes at least. We're given a clear vision of this unreal world; a setting that verges of the Cyberpunk, although with less of the Cyber ... and not much of the punk, actually, but it captures the neon-drenched locale where advertising is impossible to escape. That was my interpretation, at least. Everything has a cost, characters' lives revolving around their Number (which I could only assume relates to their bank account and/or credit score). It's a twisted reflection of our world.
I did feel that the story took a little while to get going, and that the first hundred pages or so were more akin to a tour of this world, albeit from the perspective of someone struggling through it, which attaches you to him. In fact, he starts off likeable; someone just trying to get by.
When the story picks up, though, the protagonist becomes somewhat unpleasant. There are events that trigger this change, yes, and I interpret it as a reflection of how the world twists us into horrible caricatures of ourselves just to get by, but it can be hard to stick by a character who changes like this. He makes some choices — or has choices thrust upon him — that feel borderline reprehensible, and the way he treats some people feels unnecessary. There are even a couple of character relationships that felt like they switched around quite jarringly.
And, on the subject of jarring, I did find the structure difficult at times. It seemed we were bouncing from event to event, with little breathing room between or, in some places, a slight lack of set-up. I remember a few times ending up in locations with characters feeling like I was supposed to know who they were, but I didn't.
I also think the final few chapters went somewhat over my head. I won't spoil it here, but it somewhat felt like a lot of stuff happened without going anywhere ... which, again, was maybe the point, but I didn't entirely follow what was going on. One second characters are saying one thing, acting a certain way, the next they're saying another and seemingly acting like the previous "attitude" never happened.
Again, I want to assume I was just struggling to keep up. There was a lot of financial jargon at times, and other "business-y" talk, that if I'd grasped may have made it all make more sense. I will say that the jump-jump-jump between scenes and events contributed to my struggles, though. I would have liked some more obvious connective threads.
Still, this is a good book (3 stars = good), with a prophetic and satirical quality. It's dark, so don't pick it up expecting a "happy ending" in the literal sense of the phrase. If nothing else, I'll recommend a read so that you can tell me whether I just haven't grasped the deeper themes adequately, or whether the story is actually hard to follow.
August 28, 2025
The world of Ultimart is an overstimulating and horrifying dystopia that feels exceedingly real in the way it takes the daily horrors of life under capitalism and extracts them to their most logical conclusions. This book tapped into an operating assumption I tend to have about the world: today’s corporations do everything they can to extract profit from already strapped consumers.
I frequently think about articles I’ll see which argue that America should become a nation of renters, or some other nonsense where every public service should be owned and operated by a corporation who gets to charge for what was once free. These articles are always tied to some multibillionaire or some kind of private equity who would profit from it. This novel is the logical conclusion of that type of thinking; you don’t have groceries you take home, you have an in-home vending machine that charges you per soda; you can’t just flush a toilet, because you pay per flush; if you’re stopped by a security guard, that security guard charges you for the time he spends asking you questions.
All of these costs go to what Ultimart refers to as “The Number” - an insurmountable debt which the consumers are never intended to pay off.
The story that follows from there is really well-paced; starting off with a slow, slice-of-life story about the day-to-day of life under hyper-capitalism, which evolves through a series of twists into a genuinely exciting climax. To a certain extent, that is the standard trajectory for a dystopian story, but Ultimart manages to follow this trajectory at a pace that manages to stay brisk and exciting when it needs to be, and slower and thoughtful at other times.
I do have small nitpicks, occasionally a line will imply some kind of worldbuilding that doesn’t make sense or get elaborated on sufficiently; such as references to an election which says “who are you voting for, red or blue?” With the point being that the two candidates have no discernible difference in theory or in practice, but it kind of raises the question of what elected positions they’re even voting for, since it’s not as if Ultimart has a president or governor who has any significant bearing on the story. However, these underdeveloped ideas are the vast minority. Far more frequently, the little details of Ultimart feel well-thought-out, and are the building blocks that make this book a real gem.
I’ve been thinking about the ending what feels like every few hours since I read it. I find myself going back and forth on the end - wondering whether or not certain character choices line up with what we know of the characters up to that point. Sometimes it feels as though it doesn’t, but much more often it feels as though it is the most perfect and logical ending to the story told up to that point. However, what is certain is that the ending is a bold choice, and one that feels honest, and realistic.
Impressively thought-out and compulsively readable, Ultimart is an exceptional dystopian story for the class-conscious fan of the genre.
I frequently think about articles I’ll see which argue that America should become a nation of renters, or some other nonsense where every public service should be owned and operated by a corporation who gets to charge for what was once free. These articles are always tied to some multibillionaire or some kind of private equity who would profit from it. This novel is the logical conclusion of that type of thinking; you don’t have groceries you take home, you have an in-home vending machine that charges you per soda; you can’t just flush a toilet, because you pay per flush; if you’re stopped by a security guard, that security guard charges you for the time he spends asking you questions.
All of these costs go to what Ultimart refers to as “The Number” - an insurmountable debt which the consumers are never intended to pay off.
The story that follows from there is really well-paced; starting off with a slow, slice-of-life story about the day-to-day of life under hyper-capitalism, which evolves through a series of twists into a genuinely exciting climax. To a certain extent, that is the standard trajectory for a dystopian story, but Ultimart manages to follow this trajectory at a pace that manages to stay brisk and exciting when it needs to be, and slower and thoughtful at other times.
I do have small nitpicks, occasionally a line will imply some kind of worldbuilding that doesn’t make sense or get elaborated on sufficiently; such as references to an election which says “who are you voting for, red or blue?” With the point being that the two candidates have no discernible difference in theory or in practice, but it kind of raises the question of what elected positions they’re even voting for, since it’s not as if Ultimart has a president or governor who has any significant bearing on the story. However, these underdeveloped ideas are the vast minority. Far more frequently, the little details of Ultimart feel well-thought-out, and are the building blocks that make this book a real gem.
I’ve been thinking about the ending what feels like every few hours since I read it. I find myself going back and forth on the end - wondering whether or not certain character choices line up with what we know of the characters up to that point. Sometimes it feels as though it doesn’t, but much more often it feels as though it is the most perfect and logical ending to the story told up to that point. However, what is certain is that the ending is a bold choice, and one that feels honest, and realistic.
Impressively thought-out and compulsively readable, Ultimart is an exceptional dystopian story for the class-conscious fan of the genre.
September 17, 2025
The Ultimart Dome is a capitalist nightmare (for us, not the rich): fake sun, fake skies, fake clouds, vending machines that charge you to basically exist. The worldbuilding is vivid and sharp, and it’s where the book really shines. You can feel the satire cut close to home, especially if you’ve ever thought about how corporations already nickel-and-dime us for basics. It’s dark, weirdly funny at times, and bleak.
June 4, 2025
For fans of Speculative Fiction, Dark Comedy, and Dystopian Worlds.
💭My thoughts:
This book really pushed me outside of my comfort zone. As someone who typically reads romance and fantasy, picking up this dystopian sci-fi novel gave me a little bit of culture shock.
That said, I thought that the author did a great job of keeping us entertained while simultaneously creating a psychologically disorienting narrative.
There is no easy way to say this… the book was sad. Showing us the harsh realities of a dystopian society that is eerily similar to our own.
Favorite Quotes:
"You don’t get the luxury of thought. work sleep, work sleep, work sleep, DEATH."
"No one enters, no one leaves. – in and out, day after day, an unending cycle until it breaks under the force of its own weight."
"They broke her. i wonder what day that happened to me."
💭My thoughts:
This book really pushed me outside of my comfort zone. As someone who typically reads romance and fantasy, picking up this dystopian sci-fi novel gave me a little bit of culture shock.
That said, I thought that the author did a great job of keeping us entertained while simultaneously creating a psychologically disorienting narrative.
There is no easy way to say this… the book was sad. Showing us the harsh realities of a dystopian society that is eerily similar to our own.
Favorite Quotes:
"You don’t get the luxury of thought. work sleep, work sleep, work sleep, DEATH."
"No one enters, no one leaves. – in and out, day after day, an unending cycle until it breaks under the force of its own weight."
"They broke her. i wonder what day that happened to me."
October 20, 2025
“Ultimart” introduces Corwin Scaggs, a young father, husband, and low-level AI advertising employee who lives in the Ultimart Dome.
Overall, I was a bit torn on this one. If there was one word to describe this story, it would be bleak. From page 1, it’s a story surrounding a man who’s miserable with every aspect of his life. He hates where he lives, he hates his job, he hates what’s come of his hyper-active kid, he hates all of it. I’m not saying he doesn’t have a reason to feel as he does- the world he’s living in is pretty terrible and it’s close to impossible for those trying to make their lives better.
Find the full blog review at heatherlbarksdale.com
I received a copy of this story in exchange of a fair and honest review.
Overall, I was a bit torn on this one. If there was one word to describe this story, it would be bleak. From page 1, it’s a story surrounding a man who’s miserable with every aspect of his life. He hates where he lives, he hates his job, he hates what’s come of his hyper-active kid, he hates all of it. I’m not saying he doesn’t have a reason to feel as he does- the world he’s living in is pretty terrible and it’s close to impossible for those trying to make their lives better.
Find the full blog review at heatherlbarksdale.com
I received a copy of this story in exchange of a fair and honest review.
December 2, 2025
This is an interesting look into an absurd society, that is completely ran by the idea of an artificial suburban "dream." The reality is much darker as , as the majority of the citizens are simply one step from bankruptcy and being forced into corporate slavery.
Although this is a dark comedy, very witty at times, there is some truth to our society today. This is the interesting part of the writing as you consider how much of our own society is driven by some sort of artificial and meaningless dream.
This was a good read, but I am more of a plot reader and not a huge comedy read, so the novel was a little flat for me, despite the interesting points it does make.
Although this is a dark comedy, very witty at times, there is some truth to our society today. This is the interesting part of the writing as you consider how much of our own society is driven by some sort of artificial and meaningless dream.
This was a good read, but I am more of a plot reader and not a huge comedy read, so the novel was a little flat for me, despite the interesting points it does make.
September 19, 2025
Ultimart is capitalism in all of its ugly form. A man and his family live in The Dome, a dystopian sphere where everyone is just barely scraping by. Corwin thinks he can beat the system.
A very depressing and fascinating look at the machine. Loved it.
A very depressing and fascinating look at the machine. Loved it.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews