The Disco at the End of the World

by Nathan Tavares

An alternate 1970s science fiction romance blending first contact and queer counterculture in the Los Angeles disco scene, perfect for readers of Vajra Chandraseker and Victor Manibo.

In 1977 - a world in which America launched its space program shortly after WWII - Mitch Ward followed Flynn, the lost love of his youth, into the US Space Guard. Now, he’s stuck on a backwater moon base with his only friend, Gloria, watching every shuttle in the hope Flynn will be on it.

After an inexplicable encounter with a strange, euphoric being, Mitch and Gloria find themselves dishonorably discharged, and stuck in a USA rapidly sliding into fascism with no plans and no future. There’s nothing for it but to move to Los Angeles to chase their dreams, and find their people in the discos of the city.

But when Flynn crashes back into their lives, claiming to be the host for an emissary of a utopian civilization approaching Earth, he offers Mitch the power to protect himself and friends across the queer community, so they never have to live in the shadows or face oppression again.

With the world on the brink of cataclysm, and Mitch and his friends being squeezed out of every space, it’s down to this community of disco-loving outcasts to stand up for what is beautiful and right.

Genres: Science Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Historical, Adult, Alternate History, Audiobook

400 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 16, 2026

Reviews

[Robert Alexander Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

⭐⭐ An Ambitious Book That Left Me Lost

The Disco at the End of the World by Nathan Tavares sounded like a book that should have worked for me. I received it from NetGalley and thought it would be a strong Pride Month read, especially with its combination of alternate history, disco, queer sci-fi, space travel, and political repression. The concept had so much potential, and I was interested in the way the book uses an alternate 1977, with Reagan as president, to reflect the fears and realities of life in 2026. That allegorical connection was one of the more interesting parts of the novel, especially in how it links authoritarian politics with the repression of queer communities.

The opening section in space was easily the strongest part for me. It was quirky, strange, and genuinely interesting to read. That beginning made me think the book might become something fun, imaginative, and politically meaningful. Once the story returned to Earth, though, the reading experience changed completely. The book became boring, convoluted, and difficult to follow. I kept trying to understand what it was doing, but it felt like a complete mess. It almost felt like two different books: one set in space and one set on Earth, and the Earth section did not hold my interest at all.

I also struggled to connect with the characters. They did not feel real to me, which made it even harder to stay invested in the story. I could see that the book was trying to explore themes of queer survival, political oppression, identity, love, and resistance, but those ideas never landed in a way that felt clear or emotionally satisfying. I appreciate the ambition, and I can see how this might work better for readers who enjoy experimental queer speculative fiction, but it did not work for me. This was a disappointing read, and I would not recommend it.

Thank you to NetGalley, author Nathan Tavares, and rb Media for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
#TheDiscoattheEndoftheWorld #NetGalley

[JemeryInPrint · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

The Disco at the End of the World by Nathan Tavares starts with an incredible opening in space being quirky, strange, and genuinely fascinating. It immediately suggested a novel that would be imaginative, politically meaningful, and unlike anything else. The book's unapologetically queer cast, strong sense of style, and alternative-history setting remained highlights throughout.

Where it lost me was in its speculative elements. I enjoyed the alternate history, but struggled once the aliens and magic powers became central to the story. Tavares is at his strongest when alien contact feels hallucinatory and disorienting, but the longer the cosmic mythology stayed on the page, the more it relied on infodumps and metaphysical jargon that felt disconnected from the rest of the novel.

The biggest issue was the tonal whiplash. The novel balances camp and serious themes remarkably well for much of its runtime, but the climax pushes that balance too far. Absurd dialogue from a disco-ball alien mothership sits alongside genuinely weighty material, including a soldier reckoning with his role in a genocidal machine. For me, those elements never fully coalesced.

The first half had me hooked with the book sitting at five starts but as the second half continue my rating had to go down. Despite its flaws, I'd still recommend The Disco at the End of the World to readers seeking queer historical fantasy/sci-fi and countercultural storytelling.

Thank you Nathan Tavares, RBmedia | Recorded Books, an NetGalley for the audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Jen (Fae_Princess_in_Space)]

Ah this one was such a great concept, but for me the execution just didn’t work. On paper it’s a very ‘me’ book; sci-fi meets historical, set in the Hollywood studios with a whole cast of queer characters. The beginning in space had me intrigued, but once they got back down to earth the narrative voice completely changed and I lost all interest. I DNF’d at 34%.

I think it was the writing style that really didn’t work for me; there were some really weird turns of phrase that I had to read several times before it made sense (or not). Usually I enjoy a lyrical writing style, but this one just didn’t work for me.

I enjoyed the was the author weaves modern day and historical issues into each other - removing trans folks from the military, puritan culture, forcing the ‘family’ message, moral panic. It was a great concept but the execution was very heavy-handed.

Overall I am genuinely sad that this didn’t work for me, but I’m sure some people will love it.

Thanks to Titan Books for an eARC via NetGalley

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a queer space nerd this was a really interesting read! The alternative history that leads to there being a Spaceguard on the moon in the 1970s was an interesting setting. The topics explored feel very relevant today. I loved the joy of characters when they come together. Also the alien first contact was very unique.

Note: I received this book as an ARC through NetGalley.

[Joseandbooks · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3/5

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Disco at the End of the World follows Mitch, who has a chance encounter with an alien that ends up changing his life. As the story unfolds, it mixes first contact, queer romance, friendship, and a world dealing with growing political unrest.

I really wanted to love this one because the premise sounded so unique, and it definitely had some interesting ideas. I liked the message about community and hope, and there were moments that really worked for me.

But overall, I had a hard time connecting with the story. There was a lot going on, and I found myself getting confused at times with everything the book was trying to do. The pacing also felt a little slow in the middle, so it was hard to stay fully invested.

The audiobook narrator did a great job and kept me listening, even when the story wasn’t completely clicking for me.

In the end, this just wasn’t the right book for me. I think readers who enjoy character-driven sci-fi with bigger themes and don’t mind a slower, more layered story will probably get a lot more out of it than I did.

[Tristan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was really interesting, and I was not expecting it to go in the direction that it ended up being. I made the joke early on that the book feels like "Starship Troopers, if D.A.D.T. was never enacted," but I have to retract that statement. The best part of this book is the unapologetically queer cast of characters. It's sense of style and alternative history was great and knew exactly what it wanted to be. The only reason that I rate this so low is because it takes the book 50% of it's length to finally get to the "End of the World" plot point, and the narrative becomes much harder to follow after that. The main crew get powers from beings from a higher plane of existence that are fueled by music and good-vibes. "Disco," if you will. But then the story starts jumping around in time and gets really confusing Up to that mid-point, the writing was impeccable, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good Sci-Fi book that it wholeheartedly about queer pride.

[HaleyK · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. The blurb sounded right up my alley. But it just fell flat for me.

The narrator did an amazing job. I just couldn't get myself to care enough about this book.

Thank you netgalley for the audiobook in exchange for my honest review

[Lara Reading Wild · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 rounded down

Imagine Dungeon Crawler Carl mixed with Rocky Horror Picture Show, and then add a dash of my Little Pony: Friendship is magic. Sounds crazy? Well, yes, but in the BEST way. What a wonderful story of queer joy, found family, and the idea that Disco may save us all.

[Paula W]

Thanks to Titan Books, Recorded Books Inc, Nathan Tavares (author), Edelweiss, and Libro.fm for the digital review copy and advance audiobook copy of The Disco at The End of the World (narrated by Ruffin Prentiss).

The first 35-40% of this was really good and had my attention. In an alternate US where our space program started right after WWII, a moon base is well established by 1977. Mitch is there on the base after following his crush into the space corp but doesn’t find him until they are both involved in an otherworldly encounter with some spooky fog stuff. Mitch is then kicked out and moves to LA to become involved in the queer scene there. His crush soon shows up as an emissary sent from this hostile other-dimension thing.

I was right there and enjoying the book. Then at the halfway point, it got a little too weird for me. It became absurdist with disco balls and Donna Summer making a portal to another dimension or something. Maybe it was the qualudes or other drugs they consumed? I don’t know. But I definitely knew I didn’t want to continue when some cringy fanfic slang was used during an intimate scene, and later in the same scene the crush was described as having eyebrows like smudges of instant coffee. I can’t unsee those images. I tried. I hope this finds the intended audience because I was liking it until I got a bad case of the ick.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't even know how to describe this book...it was so weird, but in the best way.

This was my first Nathan Tavares book, and it definitely won't be my last. I was hooked almost immediately because I genuinely had no idea where this story was going next. Alternate history, space, disco, aliens...sure, why not?

My biggest issue was that it felt like I was reading two completely different books. I was obsessed with everything happening in space, but once the story moved back to Earth, I kind of hit a wall. It wasn't bad, it just felt like all the momentum disappeared for a while. Eventually it found its way back, but that middle section was a struggle for me.

Even with that, I had so much fun reading this. It's one of those books that's a little chaotic, doesn't always stick the landing, but is so unique that I couldn't stop turning the pages. I'd rather read something that's a little messy but takes huge risks than something that's perfectly polished and forgettable.

Definitely not a book for everyone, but if you're looking for something completely different, give it a shot. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy!

[Dadreadsanreviews (james) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks NetGalley for the review copy! What a wild story! It’s an otherworldly tale that tackles the political struggles of our time. Flynn and Mitchell are star crossed lovers struggling against repressive governments and genocidal beings whose only way to resist is through the power of music and dance. So, can disco Dave the world? Read and find out!

I had such a fun time reading this story. The cast of characters was unique and fun with deep character reflection and growth. It’s a queer story that doesn’t shy aware from its queer identity. The world building and lore was vivid, incredibly vivid. There were points of sliding perspective and slips from the action to inner reflection or memory that were confusing, but Tavares uses dividers to break up the text and bracket off the changes. Overall, I had a great time in this version of our work and was touched by the found family and power of love and disco!

[Yanny]

This book should have been perfect for me because I LOVE a queer space sci-fi and anti-fascism stories. Unfortunately, it is really slow and too much of it takes place on earth for my particular tastes. Whenever the sci-fi elements come into play, it's kind of disorienting, confusing, and difficult to follow.

That being said, I adore the main characters and the way queerness is portrayed in this book. It feels really authentic and the reimagined version of the 1970's was completely fascinating. I just wish that everything developed faster. It felt like the story didn't really start until around 45%. If I was in a different mood, I may have enjoyed it more.

Thanks to NetGalley and RB Media for this ALC.

[Bookshire Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the themes this book works with but it completely lost me in the second half due to the flowery utopian style. I know there is a tradition of this in queer writing (see The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions) so it might well be the case of it’s not you it’s me. I liked Tavares’ Fractured Infinity better even though I understood less. Can’t win them all.

I received an ALC through Netgalley and I’m leaving a voluntary review.

[Kappy Hicks]

This book was very interesting, and was built around very intriguing concepts. I’m not sure the writing style and narrator was my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed the unique storyline and opinions of the characters. This book was so imaginative and there’s a lot to be seen in the way Travers writes sci-fi.

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

No One Here Should Be Trusted with This Much Glitter, Power, or Theological Responsibility
“The Disco at the End of the World” by Nathan Tavares treats apocalypse with camp nerve and real feeling, arriving at the genuinely moving conclusion that the people mocked as excessive may be the ones doing the most necessary work.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | April 7th, 2026


A lone figure held at the threshold of refuge, where nightclub light becomes survival’s invitation and the novel’s private ache turns briefly gold.

Nathan Tavares writes “The Disco at the End of the World” as if the nightclub were the last functioning civic institution in America. That is the novel’s wildest idea, and also its most serious one. The club here is not backdrop, not camp garnish, not a glitter-bombed annex to the “real” action. It is shelter, switchboard, supply depot, choir loft, black market, warning network, flirtation engine, and emergency government. It stores hormones and contraband, passes messages, hides the hunted, stages drag, trains desire, teaches courage, and keeps the music going while official America tries to regulate breathing itself. Tavares gives us moon bases, alien adjudicators, Reaganite moral warfare, Studio Zones that operate like sovereign kingdoms, and disco as both sound and metaphysical technology, but the book’s deepest conviction is almost stubbornly material: people stay alive because other people make room for them.


Fort Founding Mothers imagined as a patched-together sanctuary where shelter, nightlife, logistics, and chosen family become the same room.

That conviction is what keeps the novel from becoming merely a fabulous premise in platform heels. On paper, the pitch sounds deliciously unmanageable. In an alternate 1970s America, Mitchell Ward – ex–Space Guard, horny wiseass, emotional evasive specialist, patron saint of bad decisions – lands in Los Angeles after catastrophe on the moon and falls into a city where queerness is policed through Moral Codes, studios function as privatized states, and public culture is being bleached into patriotic mush. Mitch reunites with Gloria, the novel’s incandescent diva-saint, whose nightclub world becomes the center of an underground network of queer survival. Then the scale blows open. Strange disco frequencies, Donna Summer–like star music, crashed alien craft, and a cosmic order called the Metronomes reveal that Earth is under judgment. The question is not only whether the world can be saved. It is who gets to decide what counts as a world worth saving.

That last question gives the novel its real voltage. Tavares is not satisfied by the familiar opposition between grubby earthly fascism and enlightened cosmic order. He wants to know how authority prettifies itself. The U.S. government does it with patriotism, moral hygiene, family rhetoric, curfews, raids, surveillance, and the soft-pedaled violence of “public order.” Hollywood does it with image management, glamour, nostalgia, and private security wrapped in dream-factory varnish. The Metronomes do it with harmony, beauty, transcendence, and the rhetoric of balance. They may speak in celestial shimmer rather than bureaucratic sludge, but they are still deciding who is admissible. They aestheticize hierarchy so elegantly that even they can mistake sentencing for mercy.

That is one of the novel’s sharpest intellectual moves. The Metronomes are not benevolent aliens whose grandeur throws human pettiness into relief. They are imperial harmonizers. Their universalism comes with fuel demands, rules of worthiness, and a chilling confidence that they can hear the right music of civilization better than the people living inside it. Tavares understands, to the novel’s benefit, that domination often arrives dressed as refinement. “The Disco at the End of the World” is full of people insisting they know how to protect the vulnerable while building systems that classify, contain, and erase them. In that sense, the book’s speculative machinery is not a decorative superstructure placed atop queer history. It is the pressure chamber that lets Tavares ask how control moves from the bedroom to the city, from the city to the nation, from the nation to the cosmos.

Mitch’s first-person voice is what makes all this not only legible but alive. He is not a solemn guide through apocalypse. He is lascivious, frightened, loyal, petty, self-mocking, romantic, strategic, and forever cracking a joke half a second before a feeling can catch him in the throat. Tavares is exceptionally good at the kind of comic line that is doing three jobs at once: making us laugh, sketching social texture, and showing a man improvising his own emotional life in real time. Mitch’s jokes are not decorative flair. They are the gearwork of survival. They let him test danger, deflect humiliation, flirt with disaster, and keep his selfhood moving when stasis would mean suffocation. The wisecracks are not garnish but breathing equipment.

That verbal energy shapes the prose at every level. Tavares writes in a register that slides happily between streetwise banter, erotic camp, military bark, gospel uplift, cosmic melodrama, and real grief. He likes a sentence with hips. He likes a phrase that can glitter and sneer in the same breath. He likes the ridiculous word or image that reveals a whole social world rather than merely decorating it. The style is not polished flat. It is shiny in the right places and scuffed in useful ones. Even the book’s excesses belong to its temperament. This is a novel that trusts amplification. It wants more bodies, more lights, more jokes, more noise, more fear, more hunger, more song. When it works, and it often does, that excess becomes method. Tavares is writing about people dismissed as too loud, too sexual, too theatrical, too much, and he gives them a prose that refuses tasteful diminishment.

He is also smart about bodies. The book’s politics do not hover above experience as thesis. They arrive through lungs, sweat, bruises, panic, arousal, exhaustion, outfits, cigarettes, breathlessness, and the choreography of rooms. A curfew is not just a law; it is a rearrangement of desire. A raid is not just a plot point; it is a forced rewrite of what bodies may do in proximity. Even the cosmic plot gets translated into flesh. Music rattles the ribs. Tempo moves through hands, throats, skin, and breath. Healing, corruption, ecstasy, and command all become bodily states before they become ideas. That keeps the novel from floating away on its own speculative exuberance. No matter how wild the cosmology gets, someone still has to pass the sandwich, hide the pills, prop open the safe house, and check whether another person can breathe.

This is where Gloria becomes the book’s secret center. Mitch may narrate and Flynn may carry the grand cosmic reveal, but Gloria is the figure who tells the novel what power ought to look like. She is not merely conscience, sidekick, muse, or drag-divine ornament. She is a competing model of authority. Where Kern commands by narrowing the room, and the Metronomes adjudicate by sorting and scaling, Gloria enlarges. She makes performance useful. She makes charisma infrastructural. She turns style into invitation, invitation into shelter, shelter into collective action. Lady Moondust does not simply entertain the crowd. She reorganizes what the crowd can become. The book eventually knows this, and its ending gets stronger the moment it fully admits it.


Lady Moondust as performer-saint, where charisma stops being ornament and becomes a form of collective protection.

Formally, “The Disco at the End of the World” is built less like a clock than like a set list. Tracks bleed into one another. Motifs come back louder, stranger, and more charged. Refrains, remixes, reprises, callbacks, costume changes, reveals, and escalations do a great deal of the structural work. That is not cute ornamentation. It is how the novel thinks. Information is delayed not to create puzzle-box cleverness but to make revelation feel like a beat drop – the thing has been there in the mix all along and suddenly the whole room hears it. Tavares is especially good at letting motifs accrue practical, emotional, and metaphysical force at once. The sewing room is a workroom, refuge, theater annex, and political cell. The disco is pleasure palace, mutual-aid hub, alternate state, and cosmological relay station. “I Feel Love” is a song, a code, an engine, a prayer, and eventually an ontology.

Still, the structure does not always deepen meaning as much as hold too much material in motion at once. The novel’s central limitation is the cost of its appetite. Tavares wants queer nightlife novel, alternate-history satire, apocalyptic sci-fi, first-love story, friendship novel, anti-fascist fantasia, metaphysical melodrama, and camp liturgy under one roof. Much of the time that ambition is the source of the book’s singularity. At other moments, it produces drag in the less flattering sense. A motif returns once too often. An opposition that has already been dramatized gets named again in larger letters. A lore passage arrives with a trace of “just to be clear.” A climactic turn occasionally comes after the emotional and intellectual point has already landed. The book’s imagination is ahead of its pruning instinct.

That unevenness matters, but it does not cancel the feat. In fact, a more ruthlessly disciplined version of this novel might have been less alive. Tavares’s messiest impulses are often the same ones that make the book feel inhabited rather than manufactured. He has a gift for turning a room into a system, a gag into a worldview, a crush into a metaphysics, a party into a counterstate. The bars and back rooms do actual work here. So do cots, sewing machines, phone trees, speed pills, makeup, demos, cigarettes, stage lights, and cheap booze. The novel’s queer spaces are not romanticized into perfect havens, but neither are they reduced to nightlife chic. They are labor-intensive places where people keep one another from disappearing.

That, finally, is the novel’s central achievement. It takes forms of life often dismissed as unserious – drag banter, disco excess, sexual adventurousness, gossip networks, flamboyance, chosen family, style itself – and reveals them as practical intelligence. Tavares insists that what official culture calls noise may be knowledge, and what it calls excess may be the only thing flexible enough to answer catastrophe without becoming catastrophe. There are lines of inheritance here from queer nightlife fiction and queer speculative fiction alike – one sometimes thinks of Andrew Holleran’s “Dancer from the Dance” for the ache and the after-hours intelligence, or Samuel R. Delany’s “Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand” for the braiding of erotic life and speculative architecture – but Tavares is less elegiac than Holleran and far grimier, funnier, and more logistic-minded than Delany. His great interest is not just queer feeling but queer operation.

The ending sharpens that interest beautifully. It does not simply resolve the alien plot. It reassigns the book’s center of gravity. What begins as Mitch’s voice, Flynn’s mystery, and a cosmic chosen-two story becomes something more collective and more persuasive. Gloria’s ascendance, and the novel’s final turn toward the Army of Lovers as an actual distributed power, rescues the book from the danger of making salvation the property of exceptional beings alone. “Love multiplies” is a sentimental sentence in lesser hands. Here it becomes an organizational principle. The ending argues that survival will not come from purity, hierarchy, or abstract harmony, but from people who can convert hurt into music, music into force, and force into protection without forgetting mercy. That is a huge claim. Tavares earns more of it than I expected he would.


Two figures held in the pause between ruin and dawn, where love, secrecy, and near-forgiveness share the same damaged roofline.

For all its overreach, and there is overreach, I found the novel hard to shake. What lingers is not only the premise, though the premise has a lovely deranged confidence to it. It is the furniture. The cot by the wall. The altar of pop divas. The sewing machine in the corner. The stash of contraband. The spotlight. The joke told in danger because silence would be worse. The room with rules and routes and supplies. The sense that while the nation is busy choreographing obedience, somebody else is still pinning the hem, checking the tank, passing the warning, cueing the next track, and keeping the speakers on.

“The Disco at the End of the World” is not a flawless book. It is a rangy, overclocked, intermittently baggy, fiercely alive one. Its 89/100 rating and corresponding 4-star Goodreads verdict reflect exactly that mix of admiration and reservation: this is not a polished masterpiece, but it is too inventive, too heartfelt, too politically alert, and too gloriously itself to count as anything less than a major success on its own wild terms. Tavares understands that the people most often told they are too loud, too queer, too soft, too much may be the very ones who know how to hold a room together when everything else goes dark. By the end, the novel has made its case. History is not kept alive by the men who speak most piously about order. It is kept alive by the ones still dancing through the wreckage, passing the bottle, lifting the fallen, stealing the mic, and turning the music back on before the dead air wins.


Early compositional searches for the threshold image, testing how solitude, invitation, and negative space could carry the book’s emotional argument.


The scene before color – just enough graphite to locate the doorway, the body, and the hush between isolation and belonging.


The first diluted washes laying in dusk, shadow, and doorway heat, when the image begins to choose atmosphere before detail.


The working palette behind the review’s visual world – bruised blues, ember reds, worn ambers, and nightclub shadow translated into hand-painted notation.

All watercolor illustrations by Demetris Papadimitropoulos.

[Preston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nathan Tavares has more or less cemented himself as an instabuy author for me, and Disco at the End of the World continues placing him near the top of my favorite author’s list. The early reviews for Disco had me hesitant: several readers I trust DNFd, and a 3.5 rating on Goodreads typically indicates that a book has some fairly major flaws. Like with most of Tavares work, I think my love for it is going to be higher than most people’s. He speaks to my soul in a way that few authors do. This book has some significant rough patches, but it also filled a void that I’ve been searching for: speculative fiction that seriously engages with historical underground queer spaces in America. If that isn’t something that immediately gets you excited though, there probably isn’t enough here for me to recommend it to the average reader. 

Read If You Like: portrayals of underground gay culture, alternate space-race history, queer acid trips, disco ball spaceships

Avoid If You Dislike: characters facing homophobia, long stretches without speculative elements, the power of LOVE, intense tonal shifts

Comparable Media: Welcome to Forever, Exit Stage Left: Snagglepuss Chronicles, Disco Witches of Fire Island

Elevator Pitch:
Mitch is a member of the Spaceguard, which has replaced Nasa in this version of the Cold War with more of a military emphasis than exploratory. He works on the moon base, where he’s known as a queer who doesn’t get a hard time only because he also smuggles contraband in for everybody else. He gets reported for morality breaches and is sent back to Earth, where he and his fellow servicewoman Gloria (not that most soldiers used that name for her) helped open an underground Disco outside Hollywood. Strange things are happening to Mitch however, and he ends up being a contact point for Aliens who are threatening to destroy Earth, unless he, Gloria, and his new family can bougie hard enough to change history.

What Worked for Me:
The thing that keeps bringing me back to Tavares is how he captures the voices of queer men. Obviously there’s no singular experience of what it means to be a gay man, but Tavares taps into the communal history and experiences of our community in a way that speculative fiction authors are generally reluctant or incapable of doing. His books make me feel seen, like this is a book for me and people like me. He is unafraid to write a book that doesn’t center a version of queerness palatable for the masses. This novel in particular relishes in the underground and countercultural elements. Casual desire, cruising culture, queer magazines; part of his research for this book involved interviewing the owner of the last remaining vintage gay erotica shop in the world. It is impossible to separate queer joy and resistance from the DNA of The Disco at the End of the World. When your identity is criminalized, you either choose to blend in for safety or live in a constant state of reckless abandonment. 

While there are absolutely parts of the world where the need for underground queer culture is strong, even the worst parts of America have largely moved on. Ironically, apps have fragmented our community even as they increase our physical safety, breaking down intergenerational mentorship and a tight fabric of communal organizing. As we appear more often in popular media, the intrinsic subversiveness of homosexuality fades away into something that exists more comfortably alongside mainstream sensibilities. I refuse to be a grouchy old man who says this is all bad; life is unambiguously and unarguably better for queer folks now than it was even twenty years ago, especially for kids. However, we can both celebrate progress while mourning and honoring parts of our culture that have faded. This book is an homage to the history of queerness, but queer masculinity in particular. This means it isn’t going to be for everyone, but it’s hard to overstate how much Tavares’ writing makes me feel connected to the history of gay men in America.

This all goes hand in hand with Disco’s place as an Alternate History. Tavares has a lot of fun making sweeping changes. Reagan is even worse than he was in the real world, taking on some Trumpian aspects in a world where Communists were winning the Cold War. Disco imagines America’s response by doubling down on repressive policies to enforce a particular brand of morality and a stronger shift to authoritarianism than we saw in our actual history. Layer onto all of this a stronger space-race craze that becomes a cultural monolith across TV, advertising, and even food branding. Knitted together with a growing hotbed of fascism is the revelry of the Disco scene, banned and censored in the US and thus smuggled in from Europe and Canada. The ease with which Tavares shifted between these two modes, of Mitch getting beaten up by cops only to lose himself in dance the very next day, is an endorsement for revelry when times get hard. I don’t go quite as far thematically as Tavares seems to want to - that this joy is itself the change - but its defiant joy is a necessary component of resistance to fascism. Minnesota had a rough year for that, and it’s challenging to find joy when those who are supposed to keep you safe are constantly pummeling you. The Disco at the End of the World reminds us of the importance of community and losing yourself to the moment. 

What Didn’t Work For Me:
This was a Tavares book through and through, with all the good and bad that entails. Tavares is a master of characterization and compelling prose. However, I’ve generally found his implementation of speculative elements a bit lacking. While I enjoyed the Alternate History elements of Disco, I struggled once the aliens and magic powers came online. This book leans into ‘love is magic’ in a very literal sense, but mixes it with vocab like Ascended Beings and Tempo. There was lots of infodumping and talking about tapping into the power of the universe often felt stylistically divorced from other parts of the novel, like I had shifted to reading something with light and invisible prose. When magic and alien contact was hallucinatory, I loved it. Tavares is at his strongest when asking readers to disassociate from their bodies a bit. However, the longer this magic and alien contact remained in the story, the more I felt like Tavares’ writing shifted to something I’d see on Royal Road. I do love a good Royal Road story, but that isn’t what I’ve picked up The Disco at the End of the World for. 

As we careened towards the climax of the story, the camp that Tavares had balanced with such a light hand spun out of control. I can accept a lot, but it crossed a line when the disco ball alien mothership said Holy fuckcannons. Who knew these cats had antimatter bombs? If you’re going to harsh our vibe, we are going to boot you off the dancefloor. The writing is especially jarring because they're paired with well-developed serious elements, such as a soldier processing that he's actually been part of a genocidal machine for eons. The tonal whiplash was extreme, and it didn’t serve the book in meaningful ways.

The first half of the story was an easy 5 stars for me, but I’d put the back half closer to a 2. I think these issues are significant enough that I can only recommend Disco to folks who are actively seeking out historical American fantasy/sci fi and the countercultural elements that Tavares wove into the book. Objectively, there’s a lot about this book that was a hot mess, and Tavares remains one of four authors on my ‘must buy’ list.

Conclusion: A captivating Alternate History for those interested in queer history in America, but its implementation of other speculative elements was rough.

Want More Reviews Like This? try my blog Marked For Plot

[Miguel Peck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

There is something wonderfully audacious about The Disco at the End of the World. On paper, it sounds, in the very least, tricky to pull off: an alternate-history 1970s America with an accelerated space race, queer counterculture, disco, first contact, cosmic metaphysics, political repression, romance, and an impending apocalypse. It is precisely the kind of premise that makes you wonder whether its ambition will become its greatest strength or its greatest weakness.

Remarkably, for much of its runtime, Nathan Tavares convinces you that it might actually be both.

The novel's absolute confidence in its own identity is admirable. It never apologises for its queerness, never softens its politics, and never feels compelled to justify its exuberance. The disco of it all is also not just a backdrop or an aesthetic flourish, it becomes sanctuary, community, resistance, and, ultimately, philosophy. There was a danger that its symbolism could have felt unbearably contrived., however, here it feels earned because Tavares seems to understand that joy itself can be a profoundly political act.

The alternate history presented is compelling. Rather than a simple "what if?" scenario, we get to explore how technological progress does not necessarily produce moral progress. Humanity may have reached the Moon decades ahead of schedule, but prejudice, authoritarianism, and moral panic remain stubbornly terrestrial. That juxtaposition gives the novel much of its bite. It asks whether societies can truly call themselves advanced if they continue to deny entire communities the right to exist openly.

Mitch proves to be an engaging narrator precisely because he lacks heroic certainty. He's funny, vulnerable, frequently overwhelmed, and often unsure whether he's chasing love, purpose, or simply somewhere he might finally belong. His friendship with Gloria is the emotional heart of the novel, grounding even its strangest flights of speculative imagination in something recognisably human. Found family is hardly an uncommon theme in science fiction, but Tavares approaches it with remarkable warmth and sincerity.

Stylistically, the novel is equally distinctive, and if you are a fan of works like The City We Became by N K Jemisin, then you’ll be on board. Tavares writes with an infectious energy that shifts effortlessly between humour, melancholy, romance, camp, and cosmic wonder. There are passages that feel almost musical in their rhythm, fitting for a book so deeply invested in dance floors and playlists. Even when individual scenes become surreal, the prose remains emotionally intelligible.

Where the novel falters is in its second half. As the cosmic mythology expands and the mechanics behind its first-contact narrative move increasingly to the foreground, the book begins carrying more conceptual weight than its structure can comfortably support. Although I am partial to no hand holding in my storytelling, The Last Disco at the End of the World continually refuses to balance pacing past its midway point. A true shame because, as exposition becomes denser, metaphysical terminology accumulates much too rapidly, and the ideas that initially felt dreamlike become increasingly literal, but rather than deepening the mystery, the explanations occasionally diminish it.

Tonally, too, the balancing act doesn't always hold. The novel moves confidently between camp exuberance and genuine political horror for much of its length, but there are moments where those registers begin competing rather than complementing one another. Yet I found it difficult to hold those shortcomings against the novel for long. Books this imaginative are surprisingly rare. Tavares isn't interested in refining familiar formulas, that much is clear. He seems to be trying to build something gloriously idiosyncratic, where queer history, speculative fiction, disco culture, and cosmic transcendence all occupy the same emotional landscape. Even when the execution occasionally overreaches, the ambition itself remains invigorating.

3.5.

[Pudsey Recommends · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nathan Tavares has written a hallucinogenic ode to love and queer joy and I simply love it. In this alternate history, America launched its space programme immediately after WWII, and the ripples of that divergence run strange and deep through every corner of American culture and politics. Into this world steps Mitch Ward, who follows Flynn, the lost love of his youth, into the US Spaceguard, only to find himself stationed on a backwater moon base with his closest friend Gloria, watching every incoming shuttle for a face that never quite arrives.

What starts as a quiet, aching story about longing, surveillance, and state persecution turns explosive fast. After a dishonourable discharge and an encounter with a mysterious euphoric entity on the moon, Mitch and Gloria land in Los Angeles with nothing: no plans, no future, and an America sliding toward fascism around them. What they find instead is each other and their people. The discos. As the blurb puts it, this is where "the people the mainstream has rejected have always found each other, have always built their joy precisely because it was denied them everywhere else."

That's really the heartbeat of this book: joy as resistance, glitter as armour. Gloria in particular emerges as the novel's emotional anchor; her friendship with Mitch, and the grace and self-knowledge she offers him, gives the book much of its warmth. The novel is deeply interested not only in survival, but in healing, forgiveness, and refusing to become the thing that oppresses you.

When Flynn crashes back into Mitch's life claiming to host an emissary of a utopian civilisation approaching Earth, the novel pivots into full first-contact science fiction without ever losing its grip on the personal and political stakes it built first. It's a book doing three things at once: an intimate queer love story, a political novel about marginalised communities surviving fascism, and a genuine alien-contact narrative, and somehow none of those threads crowd the others out.

The needle-drops are doing real work here too. I particularly love this line: "Throw away your philosophy, don't you worry about heresy, try a little humility and dance 'til we die." It sets the tone for a book where disco isn't backdrop, it's doctrine. Tavares clearly knows his history and his music inside out; the way he warps 70s and early-80s references together into something that feels both specific and slightly unreal is genuinely impressive, the kind of confidence that only comes from someone who's done the research and trusts it.

What surprised me most was how the cosmic and the historical never feel like separate registers. Mitch's relationship with his father, the quiet correspondence with Gloria through letters, the casual cruelty of being asked to inform on twenty fellow servicemen, all of it sits alongside aliens and ascension and dance floors that bend reality, and it works. Tavares embraces the bizarre wholeheartedly: ascension, sentient music, cosmic dance floors and reality-bending discos all unfold with dreamlike conviction. This is psychedelic, politically alive, and completely unlike anything else I've read this year.

I listened to this as an audiobook, narrated by Ruffin Prentiss, and I genuinely don't think I could've experienced this book any other way. His baritone hits something in your chest: sexy, alluring, completely magnetic, and he brings such clarity to both the fear and the elation in this story that I could've listened to him forever. The pacing, the vocal range needed to do justice to a cast this size and this distinct, the way he makes every disco scene feel alive: this is masterclass narration.

Huge thanks to Libro.fm for the ALC. #pudseyrecommends

[Richard Derus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: An alternate 1970s science fiction romance blending first contact and queer counterculture in the Los Angeles disco scene, perfect for readers of Vajra Chandraseker and Victor Manibo.

In 1977—a world where America launched its space program shortly after WWII—Mitch Ward is a grunt in the US Spaceguard. Stationed in a backwater base on the Moon, his only friend is Gloria, who performs "Lady Moondust" for fellow soldiers, until he's briefly reunited with Flynn, a love from his youth who has never been far from his heart.

Following a visit from an unseen, terrifying but also maybe euphoric being, Mitch and Gloria find themselves quickly discharged from the Guard, and sent back to Earth. Moving to Los Angeles to chase their dreams, the duo scrape by, dancing between joy and defiance at the discos in a rapidly changing city that's unwelcoming to those who don't fit the Golden Age of Hollywood standard.

But when Flynn crashes back into their lives, he comes with a warning. He claims to be the host for a traveler and emissary of a utopian civilization, who has caught notice of Earth. This civilization is either the source of humanity's salvation—or its destruction. And they're on the way.

With the strange new powers blooming in Mitch and Gloria and Flynn's motives perhaps as hazy as those fog-filled LA dance floors, it's up to this community of disco-loving misfits to stand up for what is beautiful and right. And save those who maybe wouldn't do the same for them.

They're not going down without a fight—and one hell of a party.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'd give it four stars just for the Mothership being a disco ball.

As it was, I gave it four stars because the chilling terribleness of a 1970s Reagan presidency coming as a natural development of Ronnie's disgusting authoritarian conversion in the 1950s, ushering in a repressive crackdown in place of Stonewall...well, it was a seasick feeling of "are we *sure* this didn't happen?"

I spent less time pondering Flynn's freaky-deaky...um, alteration?...than the alternate history elements. In fact the aliens were not particularly convincing to me, in that their role in the story felt less than integral to my sense of what should happen next. I found the ending flowed from their presence, so it wasn't joltingly out of place...just wasn't what I'd've preferred.

The Metronomes substitute for the christian nationalist horrors of our time quite neatly. Substituting one set of soi-disant judges for a different one is a wish-fulfillment move. It's like thinking the grade-school "how would you like it" argument on steroids...unconvincing, flimsy, and ultimately self-defeating. I'm not raving like I would be had we stuck to our alternate history premise, but honestly...I was having fun, so I unpuckered and got the pleasure the story I was reading offered me. I left the pining for something else on the dance floor with the fifth star.

[Tay Maybe · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up.
Review for: The Disco and the End of the World by Nathan Tavares
(As Spoil-Free as I Can Be)

This is such a cool concept! It started off like if Studio 54 meets the Fallout universe (pre-fallout). Which seems very much up my alley. Unfortunately, this just missed too many marks for me. I found myself about 30% speeding through chapters just to get to the end. I still had high hopes when the book took a total tone shift into the surreal. I did make it to the end, and I can appreciate the love letter to disco and queer nerds but it just didn't do it for me.

The Good:
The aesthetic of this world is very interesting! It's fantastical, and heavily leans into my favorite vibe, retro futurism. I appreciate an all queer cast, fighting against the powers that be with love, dancing, and ass kicking. Who wouldn't like a disco heavy science fiction!

The Bad:
With all that good, imagine my surprise when this book could not get out of its own way. This story felt disjointed. I found it so hard to feel anything while reading. Every character is a cardboard cutout of someone with depth, but never actually presents any. The fantastical events of the second half of the book were hard to follow. It felt like the author wanted it to be a fever dream of an event. I just found it confusing to track the action.

The Ugly:
World building! As a huge sci-fi fan and a history nut, I was thoroughly disappointed with the world building. In just the beginning 15% of the book I was screaming "why are they using chits!" What sense does that make. I understand its sort of a smuggling currency for the soldiers on base. But why?! Why chits? Where is the supply of heavy metal coming from? Why is that a form of currency to be used? Is there a shortage on paper? If so, why metal? Are they mining it from the moon? What large quantities of metals are they extracting from the moon? If you are going to go for science fiction, GO FOR SCIENCE FICTION! Build the world. Do not just add historical events and never explain why the other (real-life) events still occurred. Why is there still a Red Scare if we made it to the moon and established a base. Why was Reagan still elected? Why do any of the TV shows of that time still exist in a world where we as the US not only made it to the moon, and a few short years later established a functioning moon base. I understand maybe I am overthinking, but the moon base aspect felt so shoe-horned in the author could have left it out.

Overall, this is an amazing concept for a novel. I love the attempts at campy dialogue, the queer representation, and the overall aesthetic of the story. This story suffers from not going further with its worldbuilding and failing to craft rich characters. I do like where this author's mind goes and I am curious to see what their other works are like.

[kilmosnaps · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75⭐️
Special thanks to @NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.

The description made this sound really interesting: alternate history, space force, queer joy in the face of needed revolution, disco searching for a missed love.

I was unfortunately kind of bored. I feel like someone else would love this, it just felt overwritten to me, like let me describe what is happening: I did this, then this happened, rinse and repeat.

I think this would work well as a tv miniseries. The music, the clothes, the way the alien powers powered by music were described would make this interesting. I would eat it up.

This reminded me of ‘The Story Eaters of Yamm,’ where I kept reading (bc ARC) to get to the good part and when it finally happened, I was ambivalent.

I do love a star crossed/find each other in any life type scenario so I had this an extra .25 star.

Also - Gloria is a character for the AGES. I just wish she was in a better book.

Publication Date: June 16, 2026

“They’ll let you be queer, Mitchy,” he told me, trailing cigar smoke backstage. “As long as you’re useful to them.”

‘I’ve got a lot of sympathy for the newbie starmen because not that long ago I was one. And all of us got duped – one way or another - into enlisting. Be a man. Serve your country. Find your future among the stars.’

‘I look too long at the starmen coming off each shuttle, too. Justin in case one of them is a boy I have chased up here, almost 10 years gone. They never are.’

‘They must hear us howling all the way down on Earth.’

‘The Metronomes have certain rules, he says. They call it the Score, and it’s a song, and an oath, and a roadmap all at once to guide them as they contact other worlds.’

“I died on that dance floor,” I say, dropping my back against the building. “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”

‘How do you sleep after someone changes your whole world.
Turns out you don’t.’

“You tell every queer you know to come on home for the party tonight,” I say. No argues because w all know the first rule of the Dodges.
Your disco needs you.’

“Some things you don’t speak about.”
Of course I know. Code in our letters, in his eyes. We will. Not yet.

‘Funny, if I squint just enough, it looks like a disco ball blurred with fog.’

“To protect and defend our people.”
“We’ve seen how you protect. How you defend.”
“Have you, now?”

‘We’d hurt each other only like two beings who’ve circled suns together for a couple of billion years can.’

‘She’ll forgive me for shutting her out when I save her. She’ll have to understand.’

‘You have to play the game.
I’ll play this game with him, again and again. Please. Please.’

‘They promise me power. I promise them release.’

“That’s the rub. That’s the Grace stuff. The mercy and forgiveness ain’t for them. It’s for you, so you don’t turn into something you don’t wanna be.”
“That sounds nice. And easier said.”

‘Maybe I got it wrong before when I thought heaven is a dancefloor.’

[lorenzodulac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glad to be done with it because I honestly couldn’t make head nor tail of what I was reading, sadly. It’s not even that I disliked it, I just did not care. The first ten percent took me way too long to get through. I would’ve DNFd it right there and then but that’s just not something I do, so I pushed through.
I actually will say it got better as I continued reading. But that first bit really got me feeling like I was working instead of reading for fun. And that’s not something you want out of a queer sci-fi 70s inspired novel.
The main characters I actually really liked once I got to know them. Mitch is a gay man, and then we have Gloria, a trans woman. And she’s also a drag queen. Later on with the story we also come to know Flynn, as they rescue him from an alien attack. I loved Gloria more than any other of the characters and I wish we got more of her.
While I enjoyed the fact that it was set in the 70s, a kind of very fascist American 70s, I didn’t really see the point? I feel like it did nothing for the story, there were references to 70s music and the vibe was there. Like the social issues that came with being any kind of queer in that time period, or being someone of color. It was done well, I’m not saying it wasn’t. I just don’t think it gelled with the story all that well. I don’t know, maybe I just don’t associate science fiction with that time period, that’s why it felt off. And also the fact that I just could not care less what was happening.
The romance was sweet, I liked it. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but it wasn’t bad. Like the rest of the book, really. I can understand when a novel is well written, but it isn’t for me and this was most likely the case.
The plot just wasn’t grabbing me, and the fact that I preferred the direction in which this (sci-fi!) book was going when they were back on Earth instead of in space, isn’t really the general consensus. It should’ve worked for me, it didn’t.
I thought it was going to be my thing, I thought it was going to be drenched in queer culture (and it was) and set in another time, so even more my thing at that. I overlooked the fact that the space element, all the blocks of information given to us about this alternate version of that time period, was going to affect my enjoyment.
I wouldn’t really recommend this book to people who don’t usually go for this genre. If you do, then this is the book for you, especially if you want this kind of book with a side of queer culture. I think it’s a 3 star, if not a bit lower than that. Not really my thing, but it grew on me over time.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[i · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to Nathan Tavares, Titan Books, and NetGalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

THEY! WANT! YOU!
Who me? What am I gonna do on a spaceship?

The Disco at the End of the World is a queer romance set in a dystopian sci-fi version of the Reagan era, where the film studios control large swathes of LA and everything is space themed.

The novel primarily follows Mitch, a 25-year old gay man, and Gloria, a trans woman who also performs as a drag queen, Lady Moondust. The story begins with both Mitch and Gloria coming to the end of their 5-year stint in the Space Guard on the moon, with Gloria performing drag shows, and Mitch smuggling illicit alcohol, porn, deodorant, cigarettes etc, for the base. Both are tolerated for who they are for the entertainment value they bring.

After Gloria and Mitch rescue Flynn, Mitch’s school crush, from an alien encounter, both are dishonourably discharged under newly formed Morality Laws and returned to Earth. On Earth, they rejoin their community in LA and, soon, the fight against fascism through disco. Flynn then crash lands back into their lives, claiming to be an alien host.

I really loved the characterisation of Mitch and Gloria alongside all the side characters. The romance subplot was sweet and the yearning whilst on the moon was lovely. The world-building was descriptive and I enjoyed the film-studios-turned-Mafia-Reagan-dystopian-feel. The nods towards the gay panic, morality laws, general societal expectation of the 70s were executed well too. I loved the disco scenes and building and supporting the queer community. I loved, loved, loved the music and cultural references too.

However, once Flynn returned back on Earth and started spouting shite about Tempo and Metronomes, it lost me. It’s a shame that I enjoyed all of the sci-fi elements up until then and it was the concept of the aliens themselves that let it down. They go off vibes? No thank you. The book felt disjointed from then on.

I wish I loved the book the whole way through but I have to dnf at 50%. Hoping someone else will love this the whole way through.

[sas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This ain't gonna be an easy review, because I loved this book, but I can't tell you half the things I loved about it!

I'm not new to Nathan Tavares and have been eagerly awaiting this book since it was announced.

So first, there's two things this book isn't, just because it's a queer book doesn't mean it's a Romance with a capital R book. Even if there's a romantic relationship in a book, it still don't make it a Romance. Get your expectations right.

The second, this book isn't a skim read and be done. This isn't a WKD blue to be gulped down, this is a straight whisky to be enjoyed slowly. Is there anything wrong with a WKD blue kinda book? No. This just isn't it. Expect an easy read that you can skim to the bits you enjoy and you're gonna be disappointed.

This book is a sci-fi book. It's not just gonna hand wave and be like, 'this dude has special powers because he's an alien'. It's gonna go into stuff, that's cool. I love sci-fi!

This is a book about queer rage and queer love. Your burn baby burn to your I feel love. It's definitely going to give you an ear worm and has possibly influenced my deezer algorithm for a good while to come.

It's set in a vaguely dystopian, alternative 1970s America. There are hairy chests, moustaches, and sequins. But there's also love, this is where I wish I could quote this book at you because everyone I know has had to put up with me. There's all the kinds of love and the thread that one love doesn't remove the space for another. Friends, brothers, lovers, family. Loving one person doesn't mean you can't make room in your heart for others. It's that theme of togetherness throughout. We're a community, and we can't just leave part of that community behind. It feels like a lot of people forget that nowadays. Freedom is indivisible.

So yeah, Mitch is probably going to suck a load of dick, smoke his smokes, and look at his magazines. Gloria is going to hold the stage and hold the world. And I'm probably going to go reread this book.

[Candace Sewell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this ALC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I think maybe I just don’t like to listen to really out there sci/fi. I think if I had read this, I would’ve like it more. However, I just read another somewhat similar book and did not like it, so who knows.

This premise is unique. It’s set during the Cold War in an alternate reality, where there is a space force in space colonizing the moon. Mitch has chased a connection of his through the space force, his only real reason for joining. Plus, he’s flamboyantly queer and does not believe in hiding it (which I LOVE). He runs into Flynn just in time to be dishonorably dishcarged… for not ratting out others for being queer. Upon his return to Earth, things have changed and behaviors are monitored. What can he do but go with his crew mate he (platonically?) loves, Gloria. Chaos. Lots of chaos.

The plot was marginally difficult to grasp via audio for me. This gets very fever dream and there are SO many references to 60’s/70’s disco music and many references to the time period in general. It feels like an extremely queer acid trip.

The characters I really enjoyed. Mitch is unapologetically queer, Flynn is quietly coming to terms with his attraction to Mitch, and Gloria is a Queen! My only wish is that Mitch and his dad had a better resolution. This books isn’t just LGBT+ friendly, almost no characters are straight, and if they are, it’s only in passing. The representation is stellar and a few races are featured, but this is obviously primarily a queer novel.

The writing was definitely irreverent but at the same time so hopeful. The narrator was really fantastic as well, his voices for each character really fit the part.

My main complaint for this is just my inability to fully grasp WTF is going on until fairly far into the novel. The utter acid trip of a plot line was a bit more than I could handle via audiobook.

[Alanna-Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 spacey stars

Audiobook is super well narrated - characters are lovingly brought to life, and the pacing is excellent.

I picked this audiobook up based entirely on the cool cover and synopsis, knowing nothing about this author nor the narrator. Based on the description, this book is right up my alley: queer counterculture, sci.fi alternate history, joy as resistance, and a bit wacky.

I really enjoyed much of the first half. The world-building of the alternate history of late 20th-century that includes the presence of American and Russian soldiers on the moon, and intertwines official anti-queer culture and gay resistance/nightlife/family/joy is an amazing premise. It does feel a bit long in certain sections, but not every part of anyone's life is pretty or fast-tracked. Sadly, for me, the majority of the characters that this story revolve around just felt a bit flat. While technically well-written, and potentially funny, I just didn't deeply love or care for anyone.

And then, at the 50% mark, things go über-sideways and the book lost me!

I love weird books. The execution here just wasn't compelling enough to keep me drawn in. Added to the fact that I found the characters central to the story flat, and I stopped caring altogether. So, I took a little break and read a palette cleanser .... before returning to this story. I pushed through as I don't like reviewing ARCs without having read through to the end. Unfortunately, my want to click with this book just didn't happen. I stayed ambivalent right through.

I think this might just be a book that will be loved by a small minority of folks, and will be meh/average for a bunch of us. By all means, if you love good queer representation and sci.fi, give this a try! And if you enjoy audiobooks, the production is quality. It just wasn't my favourite.

Huge gratitude to Netgalley and the publisher, RB Media, for an AudioARC of this book, in exchange for my (probably way too) honest review.

[star · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75/5⭐

set in a 1970s alternate history where the united states' space program has placed a base on the moon, the disco at the end of the world explores the story of a queer man who enlisted in the spaceguard with hopes of reconnecting with the one that got away. just when he finally finds him, he gets dishonourably discharged and sent back to earth, where he now has to confront a fascist america.

i liked the overall concept of the book: a sci-fi story about queer joy as resistance and disco counter-culture amidst a surveillance state cracking down on the crime of homosexuality, set to the backdrop of a country in a cold war. the overarching theme of enlightenment as a weapon of colonisation was quite pointed. the characters, especially gloria, were amazing and well-written, and the way they banded together as a community is truly something we should aspire to. i was also really intrigued by the alien entity, who reminded me of similar "higher beings" in the original star trek series.

that being said, i thought the book in general stretched itself thin. it probably would have been better as a short story or a graphic novel. although the psychedelic vibe can excuse some of the writing, i didn't like how often something would be glossed over and then later on explained through jarring exposition. i never really got hooked; even the love story, which fit tropes that i usually love, felt poorly explored and lacking in emotional earnestness.

the audiobook narrator was good, though. overall, while the concept was inspired, the book ended up not being greater than the sum of its parts.

i'd recommend this to fans of trippy soft sci-fi who are looking for an easy read that is unashamedly queer. thank you to rbmedia and netgalley for the alc in exchange for an honest review.

[Holly Taggart · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did receive an advanced Listener Copy from RB Media (THANK YOU!!!!) and of course all opinions are my own.

I do honestly believe this book is best read via audio for most readers. Ruffin Prentiss did the narration and his voice takes on a rhythm and timbre that is propulsive. I loved it. I was able to finish this book within a week - which is probably a speed record for me.

This is a story of many things. Firstly it is set in 1977. But not a 1977 that you or I recall, and not one that is chronicled in the history books. We're in a 1977 that has a Space program involving military bases on the moon. YEP, ON THE MOON!
Mitch (AKA Last Ditch Mitch) is stuck out on the moon, with one pal Gloria, and he's hoping his long lost love Flynn will someday come find him. Thing is... he only knows Flynn joined the Spacemen, he had NO IDEA where Flynn might be.
Mitch and Gloria find themselves dishonorably discharged from the Service and must return to earth. This is not the plan, and it's hard to know what to do. So, these two team up with the LGBTQIA community to create mutual aid, a space for people to be themselves, and a space for organization when actual aliens return to earth - some in the form of disco loving beautiful men.

I feel like this book is best understood if one has some knowledge of the history of various critical points in LGBTQIA history like the stonewall riots, the "gay panic defense" and Don't ask/Don't tell act. Although none of this is really explicitly referred to in the book, I felt that there were reverberations of these time lines and events in the book.
This is an interesting read/listen and a great one to top of Pride month.

[Siavahda · Rating 3 out of 5]

*I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*

Despite clinging on with my fingernails all the way to 41%, I did not make it to the aliens. The majority of this seems to be ‘what if Reagan went even more overtly evil after the US landed on the moon early?’ Which – wasn’t what I was here for, and I was depressed and bored.

(Yes, fine, we glimpsed an alien when they were still on the moon. But it was a glimpse, it lasted less than a page, the characters didn’t know it was an alien, I’m not counting that.)

The book’s not badly written – the main character has a distinctive voice, which is something I very much require from first-person, and the prose isn’t pretty in the way I prefer but there’s nothing at all wrong with it. It’s just…I signed up for aliens, and what I got instead was a slog through a surprisingly dull moon-base, and then the dull, grinding misery of fascism. The MC and his bestie are part of an underground…defiance-movement, rather than resistance-movement, though that was shifting into more active resistance (and fascist pushback) at the point I stopped reading. And I just don’t want to read this, read queer people being oppressed, even if it’s meant to be about survival in the face of oppression, and taking joy where you find it, joy as defiance, etc. Those are all big important things, but as a general rule of thumb they’re not what I want to read about – I don’t get anything out of these kinds of stories. I wouldn’t have picked this book up if I’d realised that this is far less about the aliens than the description makes it sound.

If I have one critique that is not down to personal taste, it’s that I felt like Disco did a lot of telling-not-showing. It seemed like a lot of events, and the passing of time, was just summarised for us, rather than us actually experiencing them on-page. Things like the disco nights, but also the shift to resisting the cops, and helping qbipoc people in need – we weren’t really seeing it, just getting told about it. It felt hand-wavey and info-dumpy, and a weird choice since the rest of the writing, when we’re experiencing things as they happen, is very immediate and vivid and excellent.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

« How do you be yourself? »
« Who else am I gonna be? »

This book was so special, in so many ways.

I have dived into this story without knowing much about it—mostly because the title called to me, and the promise of the first few chapters lured me in. I have to say, the very first part of this book with all the historical references and queer history lore was my favorite, because it almost felt like the history lesson we all ought to remember as of late. That side of realism in a sci-fi story is always a very nice touch.

The rest of the story was a little cryptic, very much delightful to read nonetheless, and although I perhaps wish the story was built a little differently in terms of pacing, I loved it all the same. I found some ideas perhaps a little too ambitious for the way they have been explored and explained, because some parts of the story were just developed at a surface level and would have benefited from a little more time and development. However, I loved the idea of a queer club being the center of an outer space invasion, I love the idea of queer voice resonating with other species from their differences, and I loved the writing most of all. This is not the type of book you binge in one go, and it took me so long to digest it for a reason.

The ending felt a little bittersweet, it not hopeful in its own way, but I think it does fit the story pretty well. This was a deightful read altogether. Thank you NetGalley for the advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review!

« You have to play the game »
« What game? »
« We can’t let them see us mad. Don’t let them get to you, that way, they win. »

3.75 🌟