Feral Bloom

by H.M. Read, C.J. Holden

"We pushed upriver into hell. We walked where nothing made sense. We lived a while in the company of madness."

A literary, post-collapse sci-fi where memory kills, thought corrodes, and a girl still knows how to read.

They say forgetting was how we survived. An erasure so elegant, no one alive can see it. Braska hunts the past. Temlyn enforces the present. Their fates tangle in a world where trust is madness. And before they understand what it means to be human, they’ll lose everything that makes them one.

The Bloom devoured civilisation. Cities are mulch. The survivors drift on the water.

Someone must find out who ended us. Before we vanish.

277 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 5, 2026

About the author

H. M. Read is an English author of horror, science fiction, and thrillers that focus on the darker side of the human psyche.

His debut novel, Feral Bloom, co-written with his brother, imagines a reality-grounded apocalypse. Blending speculative fiction with philosophical horror, the novel explores survival, decay, and the fragility of the human condition.

Read’s writing is minimalist and deliberate, favouring subtlety over excess. When not writing, Read is a musician and artist. He lives in the UK and is currently working on his second novel, Sole Affection, slated for release in 2026.

Reviews

[JR Montarbo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This dystopian thriller sci-fi is absolutely a one of a kind! It's one of the most unique and layered stories I've read this year! There's really a lot to appreciate here.

[Jan Miklaszewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book that sets a very high bar for whatever else I read this year. Part work of genius, part work of art, it lays out a post-apocalyptic Britain that you can feel in your very bones. The prose is terse but never dense and is perfect for the sprawling, dark, and enigmatic terrain that the characters inhabit. Prepare to be frightened, intrigued, and hugely rewarded for following a complex and ragtag crew through a terrifying world that somehow offers glimmers of hope and celebration of the human spirit. Can’t recommend it highly enough.

[Uilleam Whitedale · Rating 5 out of 5]

FERAL BLOOM is like reading epic poetry injected into prose, but, while the Bloom is purple, the prose are not. This post-apocalyptic journey is couched in a mesmerizing argot, which, while initially hard to follow, takes on an almost intuitive rhythm and sucks the reader in through a holistic grasp. The characters are both despicable and sympathetic, creating in the reader the same dynamic that characterizes their world in regards to never really knowing who stands where. This is a story of trust in a world where there is little (in which people have become "feral"), relations between incompatible mindsets and different species (particularly canids), and the place knowledge has in the human world. Though the story can be enjoyed without any further explanation, the epilogue, which reads like something from the SCP Foundation, elucidates how the human world ended and why the wolves are instrumental to the narrative. FERAL BLOOM stands in its own league. Do not expect anything ordinary here, but do expect an exciting challenge.