What do you think?
Rate this book
Night Terminus
Not yet published
Expected 3 Feb 26An evocative debut novel reflecting the determination and resilience of a gay diaspora as it faced extinction.
Beginning with a chance encounter in 1985, an unnamed narrator embarks on a physical and spiritual sojourn over forty years. From a one-night stand in Paris with the troubled and enigmatic Louis; to Montreal, through a divided Europe, and into the Iranian desert with the sick yet determined Yuri; and finally to Provence, where he meets the gregarious but wistful Frank, the narrator encounters a cast of exiles, fugitives, rebels, and artists. In a journey across continents and decades, we watch the impacts of one of the greatest health crises of the last hundred years through the eyes of those who survived and must now remember those who didn’t.
At once an odyssey through time and a love story to the narrator’s found family, this haunting, lyrical novel in five parts explores questions of grief, statelessness, and memory and is a meditation on loss in the age of AIDS.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
Beginning with a chance encounter in 1985, an unnamed narrator embarks on a physical and spiritual sojourn over forty years. From a one-night stand in Paris with the troubled and enigmatic Louis; to Montreal, through a divided Europe, and into the Iranian desert with the sick yet determined Yuri; and finally to Provence, where he meets the gregarious but wistful Frank, the narrator encounters a cast of exiles, fugitives, rebels, and artists. In a journey across continents and decades, we watch the impacts of one of the greatest health crises of the last hundred years through the eyes of those who survived and must now remember those who didn’t.
At once an odyssey through time and a love story to the narrator’s found family, this haunting, lyrical novel in five parts explores questions of grief, statelessness, and memory and is a meditation on loss in the age of AIDS.
A RARE MACHINES BOOK
192 pages, Paperback
Expected publication February 3, 2026
53 people want to read
About the author
Ellis Scott
1 book2 followersEllis Scott was born in the UK and grew up in Canada. He has published nine stories in literary journals, including The Iowa Review, Yolk, and The Fiddlehead. His first short story was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize. Night Terminus is his first novel.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
Read
September 12, 2025How to queer death? How to die as queerly as one has lived? What does it mean to die after AIDS, and especially to die queerly in the post-AIDS age? These are some of the questions that kept returning to me while reading Ellis Scott’s Night Terminus.
The narrative unfolds against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic that can be understood as an attempted genocide—homophobia- and transphobia-driven—showing the many ways queer men have died since then. The AIDS epidemic matters here as it conveys the sense of a forced death, while the characters in the book die on their own terms: some with HIV and from AIDS, others by suicide, choosing their own time and place; some seemingly by accident but while doing what they wanted; and others disappearing after radical militant actions.
To die queerly, then, is to reclaim one’s agency from those who are always ready to strip it away, and to choose one’s own relation to death.
Companion volumes: Nova Scotia House and Death Activism: Queer Death Studies and the Posthuman.
The narrative unfolds against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic that can be understood as an attempted genocide—homophobia- and transphobia-driven—showing the many ways queer men have died since then. The AIDS epidemic matters here as it conveys the sense of a forced death, while the characters in the book die on their own terms: some with HIV and from AIDS, others by suicide, choosing their own time and place; some seemingly by accident but while doing what they wanted; and others disappearing after radical militant actions.
To die queerly, then, is to reclaim one’s agency from those who are always ready to strip it away, and to choose one’s own relation to death.
Companion volumes: Nova Scotia House and Death Activism: Queer Death Studies and the Posthuman.
August 7, 2025
Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for a review.
Gist review: a novel both urgently necessary and beautifully devastating; reminiscent of WG Sebald, Rachel Cusk, and Alan Hollinghurst.
An unnamed narrator born in the mid-1960s recounts a series of meaningful encounters with strangers and reunions with long-time friends. The five encounters span forty years, from 1985 to 2025, from the cruelest days of the AIDS pandemic to the first fourth of the new century, and follows the narrator in his decades-long wanderings from the UK, to France, on to Turkey, Iran, India, and back to France.
Part elegy, part ode, the novel is at once a lament for the loss and a reclaiming of the radical openness born of the queer experience in the latter half of the 20th century.
The novel’s characters and plot center on queer individuals who survived the plagued that assailed and decimated the queer and other marginalized communities. Four decades on, Scott’s novel prompts us to consider what a life lived might mean for those who, for whatever reason, survived until now, into old age.
But Night Terminus also asks us to consider what it meant for those individuals not only to have witnessed their brothers’, sisters’, lovers’, and chosen family members’ suffering, but also what it meant to go on living in a world that had rejected them, cast them out, refused them support, medical care or even funeral rights. What does it mean for one to be expected to go on living in a world where family, church, state, and medical institutions would sooner leave one to agonize in a perpetual state of stigma and abandon than to offer the slightest gesture of kindness?
It is from this this very real experience that Scott’s novel so subtly and beautifully recovers the radical openness to otherness and the potential for community and support that lies in recognizing that shared, lived vulnerability capable of transcending any barriers, which are hinted at throughout the novel’s diverse settings and mentioned characters.
Gist review: a novel both urgently necessary and beautifully devastating; reminiscent of WG Sebald, Rachel Cusk, and Alan Hollinghurst.
An unnamed narrator born in the mid-1960s recounts a series of meaningful encounters with strangers and reunions with long-time friends. The five encounters span forty years, from 1985 to 2025, from the cruelest days of the AIDS pandemic to the first fourth of the new century, and follows the narrator in his decades-long wanderings from the UK, to France, on to Turkey, Iran, India, and back to France.
Part elegy, part ode, the novel is at once a lament for the loss and a reclaiming of the radical openness born of the queer experience in the latter half of the 20th century.
The novel’s characters and plot center on queer individuals who survived the plagued that assailed and decimated the queer and other marginalized communities. Four decades on, Scott’s novel prompts us to consider what a life lived might mean for those who, for whatever reason, survived until now, into old age.
But Night Terminus also asks us to consider what it meant for those individuals not only to have witnessed their brothers’, sisters’, lovers’, and chosen family members’ suffering, but also what it meant to go on living in a world that had rejected them, cast them out, refused them support, medical care or even funeral rights. What does it mean for one to be expected to go on living in a world where family, church, state, and medical institutions would sooner leave one to agonize in a perpetual state of stigma and abandon than to offer the slightest gesture of kindness?
It is from this this very real experience that Scott’s novel so subtly and beautifully recovers the radical openness to otherness and the potential for community and support that lies in recognizing that shared, lived vulnerability capable of transcending any barriers, which are hinted at throughout the novel’s diverse settings and mentioned characters.
November 14, 2025
What a melancholic and heart-breaking read. Yet so tender and hopeful. Night Terminus is a novel about love, loss, grief and people you encounter in life.
E. Scott's writing is captivating and beautiful. I absolutely adored the writing style and wish to find more novels written in such gorgeous language and with such emotion that it feels like feelings pour through the text into the reader. I enjoyed every single page.
The descriptions of places, cities, nature were something that stayed with me the most. Very detailed, real and soaked with melancholy. Simply beautiful.
The story itself felt like a lifetime of heartbreaks, sadness, grief. We get to travel through countries, through decades and see friendships, loves and just moments of tender intimacy or simply dialogs between strangers about life itself. The novel was sad and beautiful at the same time.
The only issue, in my opinion, was that all stories felt too short, some with rather open ends. As a reader, you can probably understand what happens to the characters, but as another chapter starts, it feels like the protagonist of the previous chapter is forgotten (well, except Yuri).
Thanks to Netgalley for the arc.
E. Scott's writing is captivating and beautiful. I absolutely adored the writing style and wish to find more novels written in such gorgeous language and with such emotion that it feels like feelings pour through the text into the reader. I enjoyed every single page.
The descriptions of places, cities, nature were something that stayed with me the most. Very detailed, real and soaked with melancholy. Simply beautiful.
The story itself felt like a lifetime of heartbreaks, sadness, grief. We get to travel through countries, through decades and see friendships, loves and just moments of tender intimacy or simply dialogs between strangers about life itself. The novel was sad and beautiful at the same time.
The only issue, in my opinion, was that all stories felt too short, some with rather open ends. As a reader, you can probably understand what happens to the characters, but as another chapter starts, it feels like the protagonist of the previous chapter is forgotten (well, except Yuri).
Thanks to Netgalley for the arc.
October 27, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and Dundurn Press for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for a review.
Ellis Scott’s novel Night Terminus follows an unnamed narrator from the eighties up to the present day, unfolding through a series of encounters in a number of countries and related to losses from the AIDS epidemic. It is character-driven, with many of the details unfolding through dialogue.
I am enamoured with Scott’s writing: I feel that I can smell and taste the places on the page. When I read that such a slim novel had so many settings, I was doubtful there’d be space to render them all properly. But there was, and they were all equally immersive. I can see how others might find the vignette-style narrative hard to get on with, but I felt it was fitting for a novel dealing with AIDS, considering how much time the epidemic did steal from lives.
It intrigued me how much illness there was in the novel that wasn’t AIDS, but, of course, felt tinged by it all the same. Part of survivor’s guilt is that you get to grow old and die of ‘normal’ sicknesses while so many others didn’t: I sensed that subtextually throughout. Growing old, too, can be terribly lonely, which I felt was reflected in the diasporic nature of the characters and the large amounts of time between each of the encounters.
As with much AIDS-related art, the absences (or sometimes near-absences) in the novel weigh heavier than the presences. But in spite of that, a hope shone through. The characters might have met by chance and been bound together by tragedy, but the reminder that community is still out there is deeply significant. Every post-AIDS novel is post-apocalyptic in a way: the protagonist trudges through a wasteland of a world they never thought could end so quickly, looking desperately for signs of life. The book that comes to mind in comparison is Andrew Holleran’s The Beauty of Men, which is equally heartbreaking but, as I have just discussed, I think Night Terminus is a little more hopeful for the future—that’s the thirty-year difference between the two.
There were only a few hiccups. The characters didn’t always talk like real people, which I could overlook to an extent. However, a couple of times I found myself reading an extremely detailed sentence followed by a quotation mark, and thinking, “would someone really say that?” I also felt least connected to the narrator out of everyone. I believe this was intentional, considering his lack of a name, and that the novel was supposed to centre those he interacted with. Yet there were still glimpses at his background, even the mention of partners by name who never come up again: it tipped the balance of his relevancy and obscurity, and I wasn’t always sure how to interpret him.
Overall, though, I thought this novel was great, especially for a debut. I read it pretty much in two sittings and enjoyed it thoroughly—I’ll be looking out for whatever Scott does next!
Ellis Scott’s novel Night Terminus follows an unnamed narrator from the eighties up to the present day, unfolding through a series of encounters in a number of countries and related to losses from the AIDS epidemic. It is character-driven, with many of the details unfolding through dialogue.
I am enamoured with Scott’s writing: I feel that I can smell and taste the places on the page. When I read that such a slim novel had so many settings, I was doubtful there’d be space to render them all properly. But there was, and they were all equally immersive. I can see how others might find the vignette-style narrative hard to get on with, but I felt it was fitting for a novel dealing with AIDS, considering how much time the epidemic did steal from lives.
It intrigued me how much illness there was in the novel that wasn’t AIDS, but, of course, felt tinged by it all the same. Part of survivor’s guilt is that you get to grow old and die of ‘normal’ sicknesses while so many others didn’t: I sensed that subtextually throughout. Growing old, too, can be terribly lonely, which I felt was reflected in the diasporic nature of the characters and the large amounts of time between each of the encounters.
As with much AIDS-related art, the absences (or sometimes near-absences) in the novel weigh heavier than the presences. But in spite of that, a hope shone through. The characters might have met by chance and been bound together by tragedy, but the reminder that community is still out there is deeply significant. Every post-AIDS novel is post-apocalyptic in a way: the protagonist trudges through a wasteland of a world they never thought could end so quickly, looking desperately for signs of life. The book that comes to mind in comparison is Andrew Holleran’s The Beauty of Men, which is equally heartbreaking but, as I have just discussed, I think Night Terminus is a little more hopeful for the future—that’s the thirty-year difference between the two.
There were only a few hiccups. The characters didn’t always talk like real people, which I could overlook to an extent. However, a couple of times I found myself reading an extremely detailed sentence followed by a quotation mark, and thinking, “would someone really say that?” I also felt least connected to the narrator out of everyone. I believe this was intentional, considering his lack of a name, and that the novel was supposed to centre those he interacted with. Yet there were still glimpses at his background, even the mention of partners by name who never come up again: it tipped the balance of his relevancy and obscurity, and I wasn’t always sure how to interpret him.
Overall, though, I thought this novel was great, especially for a debut. I read it pretty much in two sittings and enjoyed it thoroughly—I’ll be looking out for whatever Scott does next!
August 12, 2025
Ellis Scott's debut novel "Night Terminus" tackles weighty and important subject matter with evident passion and literary ambition. Beginning with that fateful one-night stand in Paris in 1985, Scott chronicles four decades of queer experience against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, creating a sweeping narrative that spans continents and generations.
The book's greatest strength lies in its lyrical prose and Scott's ability to capture the profound sense of loss and anxiety that defined an entire generation. The unnamed narrator's journey from Montreal to the deserts of Iran feels authentic in its restlessness, and Scott excels at evoking the atmosphere of different places and eras. There are passages of genuine beauty, particularly those dealing with chosen family and the bonds forged in the face of extinction.
However, the novel's ambitious scope sometimes works against it. The four-part structure feels uneven, with some sections significantly stronger than others. While the spiritual and physical journey concept is compelling, the narrative occasionally becomes too diffuse, losing focus as it moves between locations and time periods. The unnamed narrator, while serving the novel's themes of displacement and anonymity, sometimes feels more like a vessel for Scott's ideas than a fully realized character.
The meditation on survival during the AIDS crisis is powerful and necessary, but Scott's handling of grief and memory can be heavy-handed at times. The book works best when it allows emotions to emerge naturally from the story rather than when it explicitly philosophizes about loss and statelessness.
"Night Terminus" is clearly a labor of love and an important addition to queer literature. Scott's voice is distinctive and his commitment to honoring this community's experience is evident throughout. While the execution doesn't always match the ambition, this debut shows real promise and tackles its subject matter with the gravity it deserves.
Recommended for: Readers of literary fiction, those interested in LGBTQ+ literature and AIDS memoir/fiction, fans of travel narratives with emotional depth
Not recommended for: Readers seeking linear plots or those preferring more conventional narrative structures
The book's greatest strength lies in its lyrical prose and Scott's ability to capture the profound sense of loss and anxiety that defined an entire generation. The unnamed narrator's journey from Montreal to the deserts of Iran feels authentic in its restlessness, and Scott excels at evoking the atmosphere of different places and eras. There are passages of genuine beauty, particularly those dealing with chosen family and the bonds forged in the face of extinction.
However, the novel's ambitious scope sometimes works against it. The four-part structure feels uneven, with some sections significantly stronger than others. While the spiritual and physical journey concept is compelling, the narrative occasionally becomes too diffuse, losing focus as it moves between locations and time periods. The unnamed narrator, while serving the novel's themes of displacement and anonymity, sometimes feels more like a vessel for Scott's ideas than a fully realized character.
The meditation on survival during the AIDS crisis is powerful and necessary, but Scott's handling of grief and memory can be heavy-handed at times. The book works best when it allows emotions to emerge naturally from the story rather than when it explicitly philosophizes about loss and statelessness.
"Night Terminus" is clearly a labor of love and an important addition to queer literature. Scott's voice is distinctive and his commitment to honoring this community's experience is evident throughout. While the execution doesn't always match the ambition, this debut shows real promise and tackles its subject matter with the gravity it deserves.
Recommended for: Readers of literary fiction, those interested in LGBTQ+ literature and AIDS memoir/fiction, fans of travel narratives with emotional depth
Not recommended for: Readers seeking linear plots or those preferring more conventional narrative structures
August 8, 2025
Ellis Scott's debut novel, ‘Night Terminus’ details the emotional, physical and spiritual journey that the narrator takes as he processes what happened to him and a whole generation of gay and queer men who were wiped out by the AIDS pandemic. Scott's narrator visits cities and people that have a connection to his past and he remembers how he tried to make sense of AIDS in the 1980s.
When your body fails you, you often turn to cherished landmarks or pieces of art to make sense of why your life is chaotic and incomprehensible. Through the character of Yuri, the narrator shows us how we can become part of the landscape as we slip further away from consciousness. Yuri represents all of those men who never achieved their potential as their lives were cut short because of this horrific disease. Scott reminds us how people were treated like criminals because they were HIV positive. In our current time, where hatred against the LGBT community is on the rise, it is disheartening to imagine going back to a time when gay men and their bodies were treated so dismissively and grotesquely.
If there's a criticism of the book, it is that Scott can lean into too many descriptions of the landscape or pieces of art and it can be a tad overwhelming at times. I would have preferred a bit more of the human interactions, but that's just a small quibble because Scott does an excellent job of creating a novel that speaks to a lost generation of men. We lost so many wonderful men to this disease and to society’s indifference and hatred, and if this novel teaches us anything, it's that we cannot go back to that time or those attitudes.
When your body fails you, you often turn to cherished landmarks or pieces of art to make sense of why your life is chaotic and incomprehensible. Through the character of Yuri, the narrator shows us how we can become part of the landscape as we slip further away from consciousness. Yuri represents all of those men who never achieved their potential as their lives were cut short because of this horrific disease. Scott reminds us how people were treated like criminals because they were HIV positive. In our current time, where hatred against the LGBT community is on the rise, it is disheartening to imagine going back to a time when gay men and their bodies were treated so dismissively and grotesquely.
If there's a criticism of the book, it is that Scott can lean into too many descriptions of the landscape or pieces of art and it can be a tad overwhelming at times. I would have preferred a bit more of the human interactions, but that's just a small quibble because Scott does an excellent job of creating a novel that speaks to a lost generation of men. We lost so many wonderful men to this disease and to society’s indifference and hatred, and if this novel teaches us anything, it's that we cannot go back to that time or those attitudes.
August 13, 2025
In this story we follow a man as he travels the world with a friend who is dying of AIDS. Both men have lost many of their friends and former partners, and their friend groups and broader community are still reeling from these staggering losses. So when Yuri knows he does not have much time left he sells his life insurance to a company poised to take advantage of men like him, and uses the money to travel the world, one last grand adventure before he's gone. At first he is feeling mostly ok, and the traveling is fun, but after a while he starts to develop more medical issues and it gets harder, both because of his health and because of the ways people around them react to his illness.
This is a great book for depicting what it would be like to live in this setting, as a homosexual man dealing with AIDS not as a news item, but as a scary reality that is killing all your friends. It also does a great job of showing how fear of AIDS added to existing homophobia to make life harder for gay men. But, the world tour plot felt ruched in such a short book, especially since the book moves on to several other men the narrator has adventures with. Fewer stops on the world tou and more pages per location might have made the story feel less rushed and allow for more space to process the ideas the story seems to want to evoke. The other sections tend towards info-dumping, so we get characters' whole life stories but all at once as a report instead of through scenes and dialogue where we also get to know them as characters. So, not a bad book, and an important topic, but could use editing to be a 5-star book.
This is a great book for depicting what it would be like to live in this setting, as a homosexual man dealing with AIDS not as a news item, but as a scary reality that is killing all your friends. It also does a great job of showing how fear of AIDS added to existing homophobia to make life harder for gay men. But, the world tour plot felt ruched in such a short book, especially since the book moves on to several other men the narrator has adventures with. Fewer stops on the world tou and more pages per location might have made the story feel less rushed and allow for more space to process the ideas the story seems to want to evoke. The other sections tend towards info-dumping, so we get characters' whole life stories but all at once as a report instead of through scenes and dialogue where we also get to know them as characters. So, not a bad book, and an important topic, but could use editing to be a 5-star book.
September 28, 2025
The first novel by a writer of short stories, it reads more like an melancholic anthology, a collection of interesting, evocative tales laced with rich descriptions of faraway places and flowery prose, with the narrator as the sole common denominator and the HIV crisis as the main backdrop.
Readers will indeed be deeply moved and sometimes even horrified by some of these truly heart wrenching and often graphic depictions with an overarching theme of death.
And although these episodes, which are rather far removed in time, allow us to see the growth of the main character, I was lacking the kind of suspense and urgency to ‘find out what happens in the end’ that you get with a linear storyline.
It's also a shame that we get to meet most of the characters, which are quite fascinating on their own right, when it is almost too late for them to ‘be saved’.
It would be good if one of these narratives eventually became a spin-off, full length novel, in which the main character emerged victorious despite multiple life setbacks. I think that would be the perfect antidote for the current problematic times we live in.
I received this novel as an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Readers will indeed be deeply moved and sometimes even horrified by some of these truly heart wrenching and often graphic depictions with an overarching theme of death.
And although these episodes, which are rather far removed in time, allow us to see the growth of the main character, I was lacking the kind of suspense and urgency to ‘find out what happens in the end’ that you get with a linear storyline.
It's also a shame that we get to meet most of the characters, which are quite fascinating on their own right, when it is almost too late for them to ‘be saved’.
It would be good if one of these narratives eventually became a spin-off, full length novel, in which the main character emerged victorious despite multiple life setbacks. I think that would be the perfect antidote for the current problematic times we live in.
I received this novel as an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
August 29, 2025
As a result of its subject matter, this wasn't always an easy read emotionally, but I did find the metaphorical pages turning easily beneath my fingers. What made this novel stand out for me - this isn't even the first ARC I've read this year to do with HIV/AIDS - is the way that the narrative moved through time, spanning from the mid 80s to the present day effortlessly. To begin with, the first forward shift in time felt like a jolt, but I became used to it and then five different related parts made sense as a whole.
What kept me from offering the fifth star is something other reviewers have mentioned which is the uneven treatment of the sections: the last is very brief, feeling more like an epilogue than a genuine integral part and this structural difficulty stood out for me.
Otherwise, I'm thoroughly looking forward to what Ellis Scott writes next!
I received an advance copy of the book from NetGalley free, and am leaving this review voluntarily.
What kept me from offering the fifth star is something other reviewers have mentioned which is the uneven treatment of the sections: the last is very brief, feeling more like an epilogue than a genuine integral part and this structural difficulty stood out for me.
Otherwise, I'm thoroughly looking forward to what Ellis Scott writes next!
I received an advance copy of the book from NetGalley free, and am leaving this review voluntarily.
August 12, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book.
This novel’s premise sounded incredibly unique, but I found that the overall storyline didn’t resonate with me. I usually enjoy novels that span decades, but this one felt somewhat disjointed. I never had enough time to fully understand each character before the book moved on to another of its four-part sections.
While the writing is undoubtedly beautiful, I was hoping for a more gripping story with memorable characters.
This novel’s premise sounded incredibly unique, but I found that the overall storyline didn’t resonate with me. I usually enjoy novels that span decades, but this one felt somewhat disjointed. I never had enough time to fully understand each character before the book moved on to another of its four-part sections.
While the writing is undoubtedly beautiful, I was hoping for a more gripping story with memorable characters.
January 16, 2026
This book had an interesting concept, but I wasn’t a fan of the writing, and the overall story didn’t fully resonate with me. I usually enjoy novels that span decades, but this one felt somewhat disjointed. With its four-part structure, I never felt like I had enough time to fully understand each character before the book moved on to the next section.
I was hoping for a more gripping story with memorable characters, but the pacing and style kept me from fully connecting. It’s a decent read, but not one that stayed with me.
I was hoping for a more gripping story with memorable characters, but the pacing and style kept me from fully connecting. It’s a decent read, but not one that stayed with me.
Read
August 7, 2025Thank you to Rare Machines and NetGalley for the arc!
Rtc
Rtc
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews